The left, the right. Overculture and underculture

[TheReal_ND]

It wasn't even verbose just kind of redundant. But I'd never heard someone describe an overculture that well before.

[Hwen Hoshino]

Verbose people are common. My form of writing is very uncommon. You seem to prefer the former, as apparently do most people.

p.s. Succinct messaging is MUCH more difficult than verbosity.

It's a good thing most people prefer it. It's good for journalism.

Wrong on both counts. Verbosity is a slippery slope back to 19th Century flowery hyperbole

We are not talking about books.

Verbose people are common. My form of writing is very uncommon. You seem to prefer the former, as apparently do most people.

p.s. Succinct messaging is MUCH more difficult than verbosity.

It's a good thing most people prefer it. It's good for journalism.

Says you.

With liberty, we all get to have an opinion.

But is it a well defended opinion?

[Martin Hash]

It's a good thing most people prefer it. It's good for journalism.

Says you.

With liberty, we all get to have an opinion.

But is it a well defended opinion?

As proven by the 120 character limit on Twitter, and basically all Social Media; it's the breath of the message, not the depth. Folks are going to give you a minute or two of their time, tops.

That article, an interesting a concept, could have got in , got out, and made a bigger impact because more people would have read everything he had to say. I forced myself to finish it because I wanted to comment on it but normally I would have got the gist from the first paragraph and skedaddled.

[Hwen Hoshino]

Says you.

With liberty, we all get to have an opinion.

But is it a well defended opinion?

As proven by the 120 character limit on Twitter, and basically all Social Media; it's the breath of the message, not the depth. Folks are going to give you a minute or two of their time, tops.

That article, an interesting a concept, could have got in , got out, and made a bigger impact because more people would have read everything he had to say. I forced myself to finish it because I wanted to comment on it but normally I would have got the gist from the first paragraph and skedaddled.

So why don't the biggest sites write super short in that case?

[Martin Hash]

But is it a well defended opinion?

As proven by the 120 character limit on Twitter, and basically all Social Media; it's the breath of the message, not the depth. Folks are going to give you a minute or two of their time, tops.

That article, an interesting a concept, could have got in , got out, and made a bigger impact because more people would have read everything he had to say. I forced myself to finish it because I wanted to comment on it but normally I would have got the gist from the first paragraph and skedaddled.

So why don't the biggest sites write super short in that case?

Business opportunity?

I don't frequent sites with long articles. I use News Feeds exclusively, so do a lot of people.

[Hwen Hoshino]

As proven by the 120 character limit on Twitter, and basically all Social Media; it's the breath of the message, not the depth. Folks are going to give you a minute or two of their time, tops.

That article, an interesting a concept, could have got in , got out, and made a bigger impact because more people would have read everything he had to say. I forced myself to finish it because I wanted to comment on it but normally I would have got the gist from the first paragraph and skedaddled.

So why don't the biggest sites write super short in that case?

Business opportunity?

I don't frequent sites with long articles. I use News Feeds exclusively, so do a lot of people.

So the blogger needs to take lessons because lots of people do what you do. Lots of people want monarchy, fuck their dogs, are sexually attracted to cars. Why is lots of people an argument?

[Martin Hash]

So why don't the biggest sites write super short in that case?

Business opportunity?

I don't frequent sites with long articles. I use News Feeds exclusively, so do a lot of people.

So the blogger needs to take lessons because lots of people do what you do. Lots of people want monarchy, fuck their dogs, are sexually attracted to cars. Why is lots of people an argument?

Dude, Free Speech lets you read whatever you want. Because I am a conscientious individual, I read that opus of an article so that I could comment on it but I was ready to give up after a paragraph or two. My guess, if I can only read a couple paragraphs before boinking out then multiply that by the rest of the human race.

p.s. It was a good article otherwise but I'm not writing a paper for chrissakes.

[Hwen Hoshino]

Business opportunity?

I don't frequent sites with long articles. I use News Feeds exclusively, so do a lot of people.

So the blogger needs to take lessons because lots of people do what you do. Lots of people want monarchy, fuck their dogs, are sexually attracted to cars. Why is lots of people an argument?

Dude, Free Speech lets you read whatever you want. Because I am a conscientious individual, I read that opus of an article so that I could comment on it but I was ready to give up after a paragraph or two. My guess, if I can only read a couple paragraphs before boinking out then multiply that by the rest of the human race.

p.s. It was a good article otherwise but I'm not writing a paper for chrissakes.

We are not the rest of human race. We are the freaks that care about politics.

We are Highlanders, more skilled, quicker, more immune.

[Speaker to Animals]

Guys, I think there exists a huge market for objective news blogging in very short articles that link to other articles for more depth if the reader wishes.

Think of it like this.. When you consume news, you are actually conducting a search into an information space. People who only read long articles are typically doing a depth-first search. People who just want to read the headlines are doing a breadth-first search. Both have advantages. A depth-first search provides you with detailed knowledge of a small set of issues. That set is bounded by the amount of time you have available to devote to reading these articles. A breadth-first search provides you with maximal coverage to get some idea of the big picture, but not much detail as to the whys and the hows.

I propose a blogging site that serves a hybrid search strategy.

The way to do it is to create some kind of ontological representation of news that is easily navigable (like how your news sections are currently organized as the obvious first choice). Then organize stories in such a way that you have a list with maybe a short paragraph beneath each headline (should be the lede). If somebody clicks the link, they will go to a page with no more than about four paragraphs (not current news paragraphs of one sentence, but a normal academic paragraph) that boil the story down to its factual essence. At the bottom, you list links to various in-depth stories at other news sites on the topic from different and opposing perspectives.

The idea here is that you don't cater news to a person's interests and political persuasion. You try to create an objective picture of what is going on in the news as a whole. Then you link to stories from different viewpoints so a reader can gain a greater grasp of what everybody is thinking.

The angle or approach of such a blog would be to look at news as objectively as possible. The idea is not to promote or push an agenda. It's just to catalog what is going on in the news and how various sides are interpreting the news.

In a separate section, it might be interesting to blog about the differences in reporting between various sides on an issue and discuss the different worldviews that lead to those differences. The idea is not to persuade anybody, but just to pursue an objective perspective on the news itself. A kind of meta view of the news.

Like.. if an alien came to Earth and started reading the various news, he wouldn't read the news as a conservative or progressive. He wouldn't have any skin in this game. He would just look at it all as it is. That's a valuable way to approach news as it's own entity.

[Martin Hash]

I'd read news presented like that.