Silly Twitter word

#Trending #TrendingTopics #Milkanoël

This morning, when I opened up my Twitter account, I discovered a reference to a certain US multinational famous for its milk and cocoa products, Milka.

The Twitter message I read indicated that a certain Milka hashtag was "trending”. I imagined for a moment that the proverbial cow was, at last, coming home. I wondered immediately why this item of world-shaking news about a dullish Trumpland company had hit the Twitter headlines. The answer was elementary. The purple cow was being fed on a variety of green grass called dollars. But what interested me far more than the state of the Milka cow was the linguistic absurdity of the the verb “trending”. Popular among French folk who like to give the impression that they understand English, this silly verb appears to have originated on the other side of the Atlantic.

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Once upon a time, even innocent kids in English-speaking communities would have known that a trend can be either up or down, positive or negative. It doesn't necessarily imply that things are getting better. For example: “There’s a nasty trend among children in slum schools to become bullies.” Or, more succinctly: “In slum schools, bulliness is trending.” Just like Milka. Or Trump, on that fateful election day.

Big tweets

from Bold Atheism
and Atheist Quote Bot

Clearly I'm an ecumenical tweeter

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I wonder what the letters FDN mean,
after the name of a Melbourne priest.

Is it possible that Father James Grant
belongs to the French Data Network ?

Interesting tweets

I like these tweets from

@boldatheism

 

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Prehistoric Twitter bird icon

French archeologists have made a fabulous discovery. A fragment of silex found near Bergerac (Dordogne) contains an engraving, produced 35,000 years ago, of the famous Twitter bird icon.

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This discovery probably suggests that the French government might look into the possibility of acquiring this prestigious company and declaring it a part of France's national heritage. That would mean, of course, that all tweets, from then on, would have to be written in classical French, and approved by the Académie française.

This seat's taken

The Mormon dimwit Mitt Romney invited Clint Eastwood to ramble on incoherently at the Republic convention. The actor decided to speak to an empty chair, as if it were occupied by Barack Obama.

Obama replied to Eastwood and Romney by means of a marvelous three-word tweet and photo:

It's an excellent example of the effectiveness of imaginative tweeting. The power of such a message, today, is equivalent to what would have been obtained in the old days (before the Internet) by a vast and costly billboard campaign.

New bird will soon be flying in

Although I'm not an obsessive tweeter, I remind readers that you can communicate with me at the address

@Skyvington

Yesterday, I was amused to find that I could use Twitter to comment upon the poor communications of a senior French political figure (the Socialist mayor of Nantes) concerning the death of two French hostages in Niger… and receive a friendly reaction a minute later.

Consequently, one must be extremely cautious of the power of such a communications device.

Antipodes is now being fed to Twitter

Today, I decided to start using an excellent service named twitterfeed that systematically feeds all new Antipodes articles to my Twitter account, named Skyvington. So, if you wish to be alerted to new posts, click on the Twitter icon, to follow my tweets.

Google variant of Twitter

Many people persist in believing wrongly that Twitter is strictly for the birds. Often, this merely means that they've misunderstood what it's all about, or that they haven't yet got around to trying it out in a hands-on fashion.

Google has just announced its own variant of this kind of communications device. It's called Google buzz. Click the banner to access an article that describes the tool, or watch the following video:




Personally, I haven't yet got around to trying to use it. I'll keep you informed, through my blog, of my buzz experience.

BREAKING NEWS: I've just received an invitation from Google to get started as a buzzer. So, I've sent my first buzz... about feeding the birds in the snow. My buzz name (I believe) is William Skyvington. So, if you happen to be a buzzer, please let me know if you can find me, and please tell me your buzz name. For the moment, I'm not too sure what it's all about.

Changed my Twitter name

I've noticed that hardly anybody uses an underscore character in their Twitter name. So, I've changed mine from William_Sky to Skyvington.

Within the system, this modification appears to be transparent. So, I don't have to notify anybody in any way whatsoever.

It might look a little pretentious of me to refer to myself by a simple surname... like Charlemagne. In fact, it's great to have a surname that is so rare (maybe due to a spelling error committed by an ancestor) that no other user of Twitter has ever seized it. Now, if some other Skyvington decides to use Twitter, I'm afraid that he or she might be obliged to decline their identity by adopting a precise name such as Emmanuelle_Skyvington or François_Skyvington, for example. Sorry about that. But, as they say in the Bible: First come, first served! Besides, I get a kick out of thinking of myself (once again, as they say in the Bible) as a patriarch... like, say, Mr Moses, Esquire.

Announcing blog posts via Twitter

For the moment, I'm definitely not an addicted user of Twitter. In fact, I've only ever sent out three "tweets" (I hope my use of jargon is correct), and I only follow one "tweeter": an interesting Parisian woman (working in the medical field) who once let me use her excellent photos taken inside the Hôtel Dieu hospital.

However, I'm thinking of using Twitter systematically to announce new blog posts. For the moment, I haven't made up my mind whether to make such announcements in English, in French or in both languages.