Grabbing Her by the Brain

Okay, focus.

This morning, for some strange reason, I stumbled upon this two weeks old headline:



This reference features actor Gregg Sulkin. He tweeted this picture with the caption:



You go to the site, it has a buy link for a twenty-one-dollar hat, and on the site you see—for the months of October and November—they're donating part of the profits to charity. Specifically, ten percent of all sales.



So, this is a little bit of a mixed bag situation. There were a good number of people that were angry about this. Some people writing:











So, firstly, I think I can (kind of) understand people getting annoyed at the idea of ten percent. You're saying that it's about empowerment, but you're only donating ten percent of the money to a charity and the rest is just profit. Talk about a brand with a message to do good. But really, it's all about that sweet-sweet much more than ten percent profit.

So I definitely understand where those people are coming from, but you also need to realize that a lot of brands do that. I mean, you can look at Apple and all those places that offer RED products. They be like: Buy this thing, you are actually helping fight AIDS—and also giving us a sweet ass profit.



Stick a minute on Google and look at how little the NFL actually does give towards breast cancer research. And that's why the charity things can be a little bit tricky. Now as far as the argument that it's a group of guys that are profiting, that's just misinformation. It's a great headline, but it's just not true.

Secondly, the “ambassadors” of this program are five people—including Gregg Sulkin. Only two of them are men…




…and the founder is actually a woman. I mean, I don't want to assume her gender, but I think that she's a lady: Elizabeth Ariosto.



And thirdly, to the ladies, does it feel disrespectful if someone calls you a female? Does it feel that much different than a woman? This is a genuine question; I'm not being sarcastic. I've asked some of the ladies in the office and the answers have been a little bit of both yes and no.

It's also an example of seeing people jump down the throat of someone because they used the word they didn't like—that originally used to be offensive. Like I remember when I was originally trying to understand the trans community, I would every now and then use the wrong pronoun and some people would just GO at me. I was like no, let's have a conversation, don't fucking kill me. But that's also understanding that I don't believe everyone is like that.

I'd just love to know what you think.

Take This Very Viable Twitter Tip on How to Dig Out Old Tweets of Anyone in Particular—You Can Thank Me Later

It's super sad that a whole lot of techie tweeps, social media gurus and thoroughbred twitterholics find it dreadfully difficult digging up, or rather digging out old tweets of just about anybody on the twitterverse. Consequently, this (seemingly) paltry problem makes misinformation fly faster than the truth. Not to worry though, I'm here to put an end to the hitch.



To make sure you comprehend correctly why this is a hitch and how it makes misinformation fly faster than the truth, let me take you back to the first presidential debate—that went down on September 26—between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.



As these guys were both going for gold in the passive aggressive Olympics, Clinton hit Trump on climate change saying, “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese; I think it's real…” Of course Trump gave us the usual blah that he did not. The problem is, while he said he did not, he did.

There's a tweet from 2012—which (fun fact) I believe was the most retweeted thing that night—that says:



So, really his only defense there is ‘I didn't say it, I tweeted it—tweets don't count.’ To which I would say, ‘Anthony Weiner would disagree.’



But also, interestingly enough, Donald Trump's tweet turned into its own weird monster. If you didn't happen to see it, it seemed that hundreds of thousands of people were tweeting that Donald Trump's team was deleting his old tweets. A certain Juan Vidal posted a screenshot saying:



And tons of big names ran with it.

Sophia Bush,



Patton Oswalt,



Even MSNBC host, Chris Hayes, spread this misinformation, writing:



Turns out it was, Chris!

Although he wasn't the only journalist, senior writer for Newsweek, contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Kurt Eichenwald, saying:



Nah, but I think some other people might now.

It's just super sad (as I said before) and absolutely embarrassing. It's a perfect example of misinformation spreading faster than the truth. Would've been incredibly avoidable all you have to do is go to Twitter's Advanced Search…





…you type the name of the person whose tweets you want to look through…



…and type a word and/or phrase…



BOOM! You got it figured out.



So, ultimately, did he tweet this? Yes. Does it seem like he's denying it? Unless he's doing wordplay, yes. Did he delete the tweet? No.



And there you have it. You're most welcome.

Facebook's Foliage Changing Color

It's a time of vast social change. Facebook has jumped on the bandwagon to try and change things up in a different way.


Recently, CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying that after years of thinking about it, they are now developing and will soon ship out a Dislike button.



But, a big thing to note is, unlike YouTube, or Reddit, it's not supposed to be a system where it takes down a video for being promoted; it's intended to just be a different way someone interacts with the video.

Usually if you see something, you want other people to see it, you hit like. It's weird very few people want to click like on a Holocaust article.

So, after this ships out, you can convey your point of view on something without having to automatically look like you like it. Zuckerberg saying not every moment is a good moment and he wanted people to be able to convey empathy.

Crane Collapse At Mecca Mosque Kills Over One Hundred Pilgrims

A construction crane collapsed and crashed through the roof of a mosque in Mecca.


It killed over one hundred people and injured hundreds.


It broke my heart to see so many comments on social media saying that this was karma for 9/11.




That's ignorant, it's stupid, and it comes from a hateful place which is maybe why you're so blind to being ignorant and stupid.

Those were people! They were fathers, sons, husbands, wives, daughters! And not knowing the truth, you've grouped them with terrorists that killed people!

That's like saying all Christians (insert whatever denomination) are evil because people from that faith did something. It's such a blind and ignorant way to go through life.

Twitter: A Change of Scenery

In interesting tech news, even though Twitter just changed its design, it may be changing again to something that looks like this:



A lot of these tech companies run 1%, or . 1% tests on their community so a small portion gets this new thing they tested out.



They see what people think, how people actually use it, and then the rest of us get it.



This one (kind of) looks a bit Facebook-y/Pinterest-y.





And I'd love to know what you think on the design. More importantly, do you think Twitter and Facebook are going to survive the next...let's say...4-5 years?

Amazon Prime Air

Everyone (but you) is talking about Amazon announcing drone delivery services. My friends in the U.S. kinda got really excited, but here's the deal: it's not going to happen anytime soon.



The idea that you could order something, and then get it delivered to your house via drone service, in 30 minutes, is absolutely awesome (and super sexy too).































The guy running Amazon said that it probably won't be available till 2015; even though it's not like till 2020 that the Federal Aviation Administration is even going to certify commercial drones. And really, that's the year that actually matters: 2020. Because, the way Amazon wants to use these things, that's when they'll have to wait till.

Additionally, that's also the reason that if this is the way that things are going to be delivered in the near future, China is going to beat every country to the punch. Reportedly, they could be the first place to legalize parcel delivery by drones. While the FAA has their timeline in the United States, in China right now, with the permission of the government, they're testing this.







Proportionally, while I do believe it's a generally cool idea, there are people on the internet not too happy, saying that if this does happen, they will shoot drones down from the sky (which seems like a huge escalation of what I'm typing about right now)! But that's alright though.

I personally like the idea. It just oozes of awesome that I had to share with you. Nonetheless, it's 2013, going on 2014; and we live in the age of "I want it now, give it to me now, OMG, I got it now!", we want everything now now, sharp sharp, super sharpish. Or, like we say in Nigeria: sharp(a)ly. Also, we constantly talk about how the internet and social media are making us less personal, but really, it just gives you the option of being personal with the people you actually want to; and avoiding all the other people whenever possible.