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Wait, we're supposed to call Twitter X now?
By adamg on Mon, 07/24/2023 - 10:01am
Show of hands: How many of you call the Hancock 200 Clarendon St.?
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Comments
I’ve never …
I’ve never been so happy to be off what has become a sewer. It’s amazing. Life instantly improves.
Spoutable
Try Spoutable! Adam is here, and you could be too!
Deleted the bird in February and I am loving life!
I figure the punk band would
I figure the punk band would have something to say about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_(American_band)
That was the first thought I
That was the first thought I had too!
I can’t imagine that X is a terribly easy name to trademark, but I’m curious what Twitter can protect.
It's the X Window System logo...
...but white on black instead of black on white.
If I were x.org, I would sue Musk.
I love the idea
Of Exene Cervenka and The X Windows Consortium forming a united front.
No its not
Its actually the Unicode X (which is probably similar to the X Windows System)
They didn't even try.
It's also good to note that musk had a company named X before, that company became paypal.
Dude has never had an original idea at all, he just re-hashing old ones that didnt work out.
Old Names
I still call the Boch Center/Wang Center the Music Hall. And evermore I shall. I saw all the greats there in the 70s.
At this point,
though, if you called it The Metropolitan (the theater’s original name) no one would know what you’re talking about
I would
As a child I saw movies there when it was the Metropolitan Theater.
Indeed, infamous organist John Kiley who played for all of the Boston sports teams at their games recorded at least one album on the theater's remarkable Wurlitzer Theatre Pipe Organ. Those large black arches on either side of the stage used to be the pipe chambers. Soon after the recording was done the organ was removed and parts went to other installations.
The keyboard console now operates a similar instrument in a private hall out near Ayer.
It briefly became the Metropolitan again
after a non-profit bought the Music Hall from Sack Theatres, but before Wang donated enough money to have it named after him.
The Hancock, The Mercury, The Saxon
The Hancock is the one with the weather signals. The Mercury Theater (Where the Beatles first movie played) is now called The Modern. The Saxon is now called the Cutler Majestic Theater. No sense of tradition anymore. What was the question?
Majestic was the theatre's original name
before Saxon. And the Modern Theatre for a while was the Mayflower, but I don't think it was ever the Mercury.
You are correct @Ron Newman.
You are correct @Ron Newman. It was the Mayflower. I was the first, perhaps only boy at the first showing of that Beatles movie. Never got to hear one minute of it the girls were screaming so loud. ;)
Duplicate
Duplicate
Never
I've never used Twitter or Facebook. How essential are these things, really? I know I sound naive, but I've gotten along quite well without either.
They have their uses
Both are useful for things that could be fulfilled with other platforms, but aren't. During the recent floods, Facebook was the best place to get information. MEMA had nothing but a generic "let's be careful out there" announcement - it was all local people sharing via Facebook. That information may have saved lives.
Facebook
I use facebook mainly to keep in touch with what friends are up to. I have friends from this area who are now in California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and probably other places. Facebook has made it easy to keep in touch and not let those friendships fade out.
I ignore the ads and other stuff, and have used an app called Social Fixer to filter out topics I don't want to read about.
Also, there are some useful groups on Facebook. I have both given and received lots of free stuff through my local Buy Nothing, and I have a support group I can vent to.
that's my two cents
What a twit.
What a twit.
Not 200 Clarendon
But I'll be deep in the cold cold ground before I stop calling them Harborlights, Great Woods, and 128
128
You just lit the roadman signal.
Team 128
I deliberately translate State Police references to horrible crashes on 95 in Lexington to 128 in Lexington (or Needham, or wherever).
It's still 128...
...from the junction with I-95 in Canton all the way up to Gloucester. And from Peabody on, it's not even I-95.
In our hearts, yes
But if you look at the signs, the state considers all that I-95, well, at least up to Peabody, where it splits off and heads to NH and Maine Points (love the Maine Points), leaving 128 to head into Gloucester.
Ditto the Auditorium stop on the Green Line.
Hynes Schmines.
Ahem
That would be Massachusetts on the Green Line, or, rather, on the Boylston Street Subway.
Not to be confused with Massachusetts Avenue on the Orange Line, which opened decades later.
But, hey, it's been the Hynes Auditorium, and then the Hynes Convention Center, for many years. First the War Memorial Auditorium, then John B. Hynes Memorial Auditorium, then John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center.
I stand corrected!
On the other hand, it's kind of nice they haven't messed with Lechmere. Yet.
I recently* told my wife to
I recently* told my wife to take the Red Line to "Washington" and she looked at me like I'd told her to change trains in Tierra del Fuego.
* i.e., almost forty years after the name changed
Auditorium
I thought I was the only one who still called it Auditorium!
Kenmore, Auditorium, Copley, Arlington...
Coming in from BC circa 1980, the sequence was permanently burned into my brain. Green Line is still kind of K-A-C-A despite the name change :-)
Bluesky
Threads is obviously bogus and formerly-Twitter feels like 4chan. Mastodon left me unimpressed and a little stressed out. Here's hoping Bluesky can capture the magic of early Twitter with good content moderation, realtime news sharing, and community-building tools.
Interesting
I found Bluesky kind of empty and boring, but that might be because a) it doesn't have all that many users and b) I'm intensely parochial and wasn't finding much Bostonish stuff on it. But it's been a month or so, I should try it again.
Mastodon is sort of the Harvard of social networks: The hardest part is getting in (I mean, which server do you choose?), but once you're there, well, I've found it a lot more calming (Twitter-type haters have yet to migrate there successfully, maybe a highish bar to entry has its advantages) and it now has lots and lots of Boston people there (again, I'm parochial like that).
Spoutible's interface is very Twitter-like. Don't know if it's reached that critical-mass network effect yet.
Fair read
I think that's a fair read on things Adam. Bluesky needs more users to be actually fun and useful, but I feel good about its potential. Plus I like having a blank slate (for now). Maybe I should have stuck it out on Mastodon last fall when I joined.
Everything feels very much in flux. Even Reddit. FB/IG don't know what they are. I bet TikTok is glad to not have the US Senate talking about them every day. What will the internet look like in a year or two? AI bots and hot garbage social media websites? Maybe. I think people still seek out community and distractions/fun and will find their people and places. But I am pretty anxious about *all of it*
I use both Mastodon and Bluesky
I left Twitter when he who shall not be named sicced his followers on a gay Jewish ex-employee who ended up having to abandon his home for safety.
I prefer Mastodon to Bluesky but use both because some people I want to interact with are much more active on the latter. There are good and bad things about each. I love following the #BloomScrolling hashtag on Mastodon because it keeps my timeline filled with pretty pictures.
@Adam - there are Twitter-type haters on certain Mastodon servers, but most other servers have the hate-servers on block lists.
I have Mastadon an try , and
I gave Mastadon a try , and I really gave them a chance but I felt like it was stifling to be put in a box from day one. I get the federations can all talk to each other if they want or close themselves off but honestly if I am looking for a closed universe I'll go to Facebook with a restricted account. If I'm on a Twitter or Instagram type service I'm looking to talk to the world, not just those I've deemed as in my circle.
Adam
Thats the thing.. on bsky, its all activity for me. But for me its nudies, penis shots and gay guys bitching. Some news stuff.. but like all sites, its who you follow.
I agree I don't see much Boston stuff on there, but for what I am looking for to make me smile.. bsky is where its at.
Mastadon, I login.. but the fediverse setup makes it absolutely a bear to use. I guess I should use a different client but I am a web browser user mostly (which is key for me to use it). And there's really only one.. the website itself. And its just a bear to use.. needs a UI workover.
It just doesnt seem very intuitive at all. Its hard to find people, hard to keep up with threads. I mostly just use it to talk to a handful of people.
Spoutible is similar to bsky. But like everything else, the masses flocked and left. I fear that is what is going to happen to bsky. I'm still there but there's no activity.. but then again any site is what you make of it. Don't login and post, site will fail.
Everyone flocked to threads it seems. First big boat that came along. It's like twitter was a hitler boat, and then Mussiolli came along with his and everyone jumped ship without even thinking about where they were going to.
Chicken & Egg
There are maybe 3 people I "follow" on Twitter. By that I mean I use nitter.net to view their public tweets. I certainly don't respond to anyone or otherwise interact with the platform.
These people have a lot of followers and don't want to leave the platform unless a sizable majority of their followers do as well. So while everyone hates Twitter, these posters included, the more fragmented the alternatives become the more likely they are to just stick with twitter since this is where their base remains.
Bluesky is X...
And X is Bluesky...
Jack and Aparthied Brat are up to something.
Twix
Twix is the first thing that came to my mind. Musk Twix comes in a package with 2 right Twix .
Honestly, who cares?
The amount of free publicity Musk gets on a daily basis is absolutely insane.
Let's Go Back to Constantinople
Istanbul is a reasonable name (as is Boston), but "X" is the unknown, the variable you solve for in an equation, the placeholder in a first draft, and the mark illiterate people make instead of signing their names.
I wonder what that's going to do to search engine results.
Constantinople was Byzantium...
... and then it was briefly Nova Roma before becoming Constantinopolis. It was officially Qustantiniyye from 1453, but unofficially people called it "Stamboul", which was either a contraction from "conSTANtinoPOLis" or from "eis ten polis" = "to the city". And in 1930, "Stamboul", spelled "Istanbul" in the new Turkish alphabet, became the official name.
Don't believe the lie that it was nobody's business but the Turks', though. It was a Greek city through most of its history and had a large Jewish population in its heyday as the Ottoman capital. Twentieth century nationalists drove out most of the non-Turks, but it's still the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, if I'm not mistaken.
Well ...
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam.
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way?
Actually, they changed it because of new ownership
New Amsterdam was Dutch. It became New York when the English took over. [I know, it's just a silly song, but that line's always bugged me.]
Yours doesn't rhyme
n/t
Boston used to be Shawmut
...before the Puritans renamed it after a sleepy port in East Anglia, itself originally (St.) Botolph's Town.
Tremontaine
Until they tore down two of the three montaines, leaving us with just Beacon Hill - and Tremont Street.
So all the unpaid severance and rent payments...
Can have checks stamped with "X" on the signature line. Cool!
This.
actually I am wondering if this is a legal loophole so he won't have to pay out rent or severance payments.
These corporate weenies use loopholes to avoid paying debitors and former employees by saying "welp that company is gone, long live new company.. oh and we don't have to pay you".
Musk is sleazy enough to try this.
And Tweets are now called...
...Xcrement!
This must be repeated
endlessly everywhere.
Please please please find a
Please please please find a way to make this happen!
It's now
an X-bird.
.
probably pining for the fjords!
Xmas in July
Maybe the Musk Man has something up his sleeve, but this just seems like a gift of nothingness.
I'm calling bullshit
The x.com domain is a cloudflare redirect to twitter.com. None of the legalese on Twitter has been updated to reflect the change. You still buy "Twitter Blue" if you want the checkmark and a monthly subscription which is like ignoring the most basic product part of the rebranding.
Hell, the logo still gets labeled "Twitter" in the CSS/HTML even though it's an X now.
Literally nothing about this "rebrand" couldn't be undone in a few hours of effort. Remember in April when he changed everything to Doge?
I'm calling this all bullshit.
Oddly the blue bird disappeared
Replaced by an "X".
About 1:43 not long after this post.
Or maybe it is because I clicked on the "Welcome to X" trend.
It's all about cache
The bird was probably cached in your browser still.
But in April it was a shiba inu "Doge" dog...then the bird still came back.
Unless they make a LOT more semi-permanent moves (with things like DNS, policy documents, etc.) then I still think it's all bullshit.
The BS is real
Twitter now has turned into a beta site where the CEO says "do it now" and they do it. Avoiding any sort of development process. So they just deploy bad code.
A few weeks ago they were down for an entire Saturday because they deployed some bad code. Dude's never heard of QA or even planning. its "Do it because I said so".
This becomes more and more clear every day. Same with this new branding. Clearly un-thought out, and will be a slow change over time.
because he didn't think about this before hand, and considering x is a single character, he's going to very quickly find that changing the word 'twitter' is more than a cosmetic one, but a core system change. (and he's had zero luck lately with core system changes, it breaks things)
And for the record, he actually changed twitter's holding company to be "X Corp" earlier this year. Its been noted on bottom corner of the site for months now.
Magoo sez
Magoo is planning to start Magoo’s own social media messengering platform called Magoo’s Wild and Wacky Funzone Spickwicky. Spickwickies are similar to tweets. But instead of tweeting one sends out a spickwicky no longer than 130 characters. Magoo.
Magoo would do a better job
than Musk is doing.
The Hancock is always the Hancock.
And there's the Old Hancock. If you call them anything else, you don't live in Boston, or you work for one of the owners, or you are highly conforming and probably can't jaywalk, either.
Realtors...
...call it the HaCo.
Pretty much every move Space Karen makes looks
dumb and desperate at this point. This particular rebranding effort will likely end up as on of those business school case studies in what not to do and how to do it as badly as possible.
Birds Aren't Real
I think some kids tipped off Elon that Birds Aren't Real, so now he is on a mission to purge them all. #teachthecontroversy
New Space Karen book title!
This is good news for my planned series of books for intellectual children about boy inventor/idiot Space Karen, sometimes backed up by his henchboys, the Tesla Toadies. Titles currently planned are:
Space Karen and His Flamethrower Factory
Space Karen and His Money Tunnel
Space Karen and His Electric Pyramid
Space Karen and His Pervert-Seeking Submarine
Space Karen and His Tesla Toadies in the X-verse of Doom
Space Karen and His Big Exploding Rocket
Space Karen and His Death-Trip to Mars
I like "X-verse" much better than "Twitterverse", so thank you Elon, or whatever your name is. You truly are an inspiration
makes sense...
thats where i get all my x-rated stuff these days anyhow.