Pondering Social Media

The average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. In 2000 social media analytics credited humanity with a 12 second attention span, in 2013 that average fell to 8 seconds. Scoff if you like, but I tend to believe statistics culled by social media marketers.

Ponder this from https://www.disruptiveadvertising.com/social-media/be-in-the-know-2018-social-media-statistics-you-should-know/ –

• Close to half the world’s population (3.03 billion people) are on some type of social media.
• 64% of online shoppers say that a video on social media helped them decide on a product to buy.
• Only 43% of online stores receive significant traffic from their social media pages.
• Acknowledgment is key: 77% of Twitter users appreciate a brand more when their tweet is responded to. It takes about 10 hours on average for businesses to respond to a tweet, even though customers want a response within four hours.
• Content marketing is a top priority of B2B businesses after brand building and social media engagement.
• 59% of adults between 18 and 29 are using Instagram.
• The average person spends about 20 minutes on Facebook or one in every six minutes a person will spend online.
• 1.57 billion YouTube users watch about 5 billion videos on average every single day. Of the 2.1 billion total accounts on Facebook, 270 million profiles are fake.
• 86% of women will look at social media before deciding to make a purchase.
• People are accessing 69% of their media on their smartphones.
• 89% of people on smartphones are using apps, while only 11% are using standard websites. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is the most popular app at 19% (measured by time spent).
• Pinterest is number one for mobile social media, with 64% of referral traffic being driven by smartphones and tablets.
• 57% of all mobile users will not recommend a business if their mobile website is poorly designed or unresponsive.
• 40% of all mobile users are searching for a local business or interest.
• Mobile websites that load in 5 seconds or less will end in a viewing session that’s 70% longer than their slower counterparts.
• 92% of American teens accessed the internet on a daily basis, where 56% claim to connect several times a day, and 24% are connected almost constantly to the internet.

Lets talk selfies, next to tediously boring photos of mealtime “nobody cares what you had for dinner” fluff, selfies are a blight more annoying than hot sidewalk gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Stalwart aversion to catatonic postings of selfies on social media and subsequent refusal to validate self centered media content with likes, solidifies my place as a middle aged dinosaur. Every week over 20 million selfie posts are immortalized on social media, who am I to bemoan the erosion of civilization?

Social media is a business. It knows precisely how vain, inattentive, malleable, financially sound, politically inclined and impulsive every last one of us is. It knows who we are, where we are, what we eat, where we shop, how we vote, our views on abortion, gay rights and immigration. Prospective employers, financial institutions, property management companies and law enforcement routinely scrutinize social media footprints.

Valuable as it is intrusive, pondering social media asks only that we understand how it works, personal footprints we leave behind and magnitude of this marketing tool.

Road Trip Gallery

It wouldn’t be summer without a road trip to the Okanagan Valley, forty one years gone but forever home. Wildfire smoke smothered the road home. Falling ash sang red sun blues, an eerily apocalyptic symphony oblivious to suffocating cinder rain. Ponder a road trip gallery –

Enlarge, explore, see more of my husband’s road trip photos at the link below.

Ponder Trump Speak

This past weekend Donald Trump delayed tRump time at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J. to speak at a fundraiser hosted by the chairman of Nathan’s Hot Dogs in the Hamptons. Trump seized the opportunity to blither “clean coal”. Key word being “blither”.

http://www.herald-dispatch.com/ap/ap_nation/trump-attends-hamptons-fundraiser-hosted-by-hot-dog-magnate/article_14ad4743-2e4b-5584-bb62-c4e342b75b9f.html

Everyone knows Trump’s position on coal, the environment and decimation of all policies Obama. Most of us glean Trump policy from regurgitated reason of talking media heads, few bother to ponder the source verbatim. Take a moment to read this transcript of Trump’s speech in the Hamptons. Read it and weep. –

“We have — clean coal exports have increased, 60 percent last year — clean coal, which is one of our big assets that we weren’t allowed to use for our miners. You remember Hillary with the coal, right, sitting with the miners at the table? Remember? That wasn’t so good for her. So the people of West Virginia and all over, you look at Wyoming, you look at so many different places where they just, Pennsylvania, where they loved what we did, and it’s clean coal and we have the most modern procedures. But it’s a tremendous form of energy in the sense that in a military way — think of it — coal is indestructible.”

“You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the windmills, boom, boom, boom [mimicking windmill sound] bing [mimes shooting large gun], that’s the end of that one. If the birds don’t kill it first. The birds could kill it first. They kill so many birds. You look underneath some of those windmills, it’s like a killing field, the birds. But you know, that’s what they were going to, they were going to windmills. And you know, don’t worry about — when the wind doesn’t blow, I said, ‘What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?’ ‘Well, then we have a problem.’

“Okay, good. They were putting them in areas where they didn’t have much wind, too. And it’s a subs — you need subsidy for windmills. You need subsidy. Who wants to have energy where you need subsidy? So, uh, the coal is doing great.”

Courtney Hadwin

For the record I don’t spend much time watching network television. That said, rare idle moments find shows like America’s Got Talent airing in the background. Why? Because the likes of 13 year old Courtney Hadwin might blow my mind. Ponder these clips. The girl is 13 years old!

Results of America’s vote aired tonight. Fear not  – Courtney made it to the semi-finals.

Pondering ALMA Timelapse

Ponder the Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub-millimeter Array ( ALMA ), a ground level array of 66 radio telescopes commanding Chile’s Atacama Desert at an elevation of 16,000 feet. Operational since 2013 with cooperation from the U.S., Europe, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Chile, ALMA is our largest ground based telescope array. Mission – ” to provide insight on star birth during the early universe and detailed imaging of local star and planet formation. ”

http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/home/

Lose yourself in ALMA timelapse –

 

Burning Tears Of Saint Lawrence

Tonight through August 13 the Perseid meteor shower promises to deliver peak sightings. According to science – “In 1835, Adolphe Quetelet identified the shower as emanating from the constellation Perseus. In 1866, after the perihelion passage of Swift-Tuttle in 1862, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli discovered the link between meteor showers and comets.“. Seems over zealous astronomers neglected to ask the church were Perseid originated.

Martyred Christian deacon Saint Lawrence was put to death August 10, 258 AD by Roman emperor Valerian. According to legend Lawrence was grilled to death over hot coals. Before succumbing to his death deacon Lawrence is said to have told his torturers he was “done” on one side and to turn him over. ( reason National Geographic claims made Lawrence the patron saint of chefs ) History documents Catholic observance of Saint Lawrence martyrdom on August 10 since the fourth century.

Somewhere in the annuals of early Catholic history Perseids became the fiery tears of Saint Lawrence. Clearly the only explanation for a annual event coinciding with grilling the patron saint of chefs.

A Perseid meteor crosses the night sky over a statue of Jesus Christ in a Belarusian village on August 13, 2016. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/08/news-perseid-meteor-lawrence-christianity/

Go to https://www.space.com/32868-perseid-meteor-shower-guide.html for tips on watching Perseid.

Zoom In On The Heart Of The Milky Way

 

2018 Perseids

Every year between July 17 and August 24 Earth orbit crosses paths with debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle. Swift-Tuttle follows a long exaggerated oblong orbit, a journey of 133 years to complete one lap from beyond Pluto when farthest from the Sun, to inside Earth orbit when closest to our Sun. Swift-Tuttle’s behemoth debris tail is a product of solar warming – every time it passes through the inner solar system, solar energy loosens particles of icy comet releasing tiny particles into the debris stream. Particles which smack our atmosphere at 210,000 km/hour to deliver the Perseid Meteor shower.

This year, Perseid 2018 coincides with a near moonless sky on August 11, 12 and 13. Recommended viewing typically suggests observation points away from city lights between midnight and dawn. Dark skies help but don’t give up if you aren’t a night crawler or can’t escape light pollution. Be sky aware, gaze upwards and if you’re lucky a spectacular earthgrazer ( slow, colourful meteors traveling along the horizon before midnight when the radiant point of comet debris is close to the horizon ) might just make your day.

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2018/08/04/perseid-meteor-shower-trickle-will-soon-become-a-torrent/

Earth encounters debris from comet, via Astro Bob.

https://www.myguidetenerife.com/events/the-perseid-meteor-shower-2018

Petunia and The Vipers

Ponder Petunia & The Vipers –

From Petunia & The Vipers Facebook page –

“Louis Armstrong was once asked what his favorite kind of music was, and his response was simple; “Good music”. Petunia & the Vipers’ sound may not sit comfortably in one certain genre, but “Good Music” describes it well. Hank Williams on acid… Tom Waits meets Elvis at Woody Guthrie’s Hobo junction… Avant-Country night club scene music… One of the best bands in the world today, of any kind… hillbilly-flavoured-swing inflected-ragtime-goodtime-thunderously rolling-one-of-a-kind-you-don’t-want-to-miss-this-sort-of-a-show… A new music that springboards off of music of the past and jumps into the present day, left with only echoes of the past… Something in between 1920’s and steam punk. It’s good for your mind… These are just a few of the words uttered by folks around the globe trying to pin down a description of all that is Petunia & The Vipers.”

Petunia & The Vipers make me smile. Enjoy –

http://petuniaandthevipers.com/

 

 

Vancouver Tonight

My husband’s view of Vancouver tonight….

All photo credits – https://www.flickr.com/photos/15574096@N00/