Everybody’s In Italy

~ Laura

I may be oversaturated with new social media apps. I started creating little videos of our vacation images on my iPhone and posting them on TikTok — a fun way to while away the hours when waiting for trains and planes. And then today, I was pressured into signing up for Threads (@laura11d), which is supposed to be some new happy place for the Twitter crowd, but really looks like the same thing. 

So, this morning, I’m overwhelmed with jet lag, too much social media, and a thousand pictures of Italy on my hard drive that need culling. That means, this week’s newsletter won’t be a coherent essay on an important thing. Student loans and affirmative action will have to wait until next week.

Read more at Apt. 11D, the newsletter

Published by Laura

14 thoughts on “Everybody’s In Italy”

  1. I left twitter when the craziness got too much for me and was only reading your tweets (and links). Now I can’t even get to those (no login, means no twitter). So, with little an article about Threads, I downloaded the app and then it logged me in automatically using my instagram info. Now, I’m stuck, because apparently, deleting your Threads acount would mean I lose my Instagram, too. But, that thoughtless decision mean that I am in the 400,000 in signups :-). Kiddos only found two people they know with lower numbers (Phoebe Gates, who must have had an access code, at <2000 and a classmate).

    I hope people do bring what I liked in twitter, i.e. links to articles, art, and links to the exploits of my favorite baseball player. . . .

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    1. That’s good to know about the Threads sign up- not sure if I want it but definitely don’t want to lose my Instagram. (It’s my window into the lives of young adult nieces/cousins, though I have been spending way too much time on Reels this summer.)

      Like bj I never had the twitter app or an account, but would view tweets via other pages including one from Slate. I don’t know why aggregators weren’t more popular when all the verification issues came up, but anyway now I have no way to view without signing up and there’s no way I’ll do that. So my mindless scrolling time is now all on Ig rather than divided with twitter.

      Looking forward to more Italy pix! Sounds like an amazing trip.

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      1. They’re saying that you can deactivate Threads without losing Instagram, and that they’re working on making the ability to delete Threads and keep Insta. But I like to be safe and simply made a new Instagram account. 😀

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  2. After years as a twitter lurker, I finally signed up for twitter in the last week or so when they were blocking non-members. I believe I could have waited them out again, but I didn’t. (Even pre-Musk, there were various shenanigans aimed at punishing people without accounts and coercing them into signing up. For example, you could only scroll down so far and then they’d cut you off.) I still got rate limited during the recent twitter troubles, even after signing up. I don’t know about you all, but half the point of old twitter was that it was really, really fast.

    At the moment, everybody that I want to read is still on twitter, but a lot of people are making back-up accounts elsewhere, because you never know when twitter is going to go down. This did demonstrate, though, that twitter is not a monopoly!

    I also signed up for Whatsapp this week in preparation for my upcoming trip to England. I don’t know what it is, really, but it seems to be important for overseas travel and communication.

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    1. As I was recently pointing out to my family, the US government has spent roughly two twitters in Ukraine.

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    2. WhatsApp is really good for connecting people while you’re overseas – in real time.
      So, let’s say we’re on holiday in London – and get separated for some reason (Party A wants to shop at the Borough Market; Party B wants to cool off at a cafe, and maybe stroll the Thames path down to the Globe). You can keep in contact via WhatsApp – using text messages or even calls – without having to have phone sim cards – and/or the outrageous roaming call charges.
      It’s using the Internet, rather than the phone companies.

      We also use it a lot for group chats/messages at work. There are other options – but this one seems to be garnering a lot of community buy in – i.e. people tend to already have the app loaded.

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  3. Agree with you on that New Yorker column. I found myself wanting to say “You must be fun at parties!”

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    1. Yes, and I was ready to hear fact-based arguments about how tourism distorts local economies and activities (orphanage tourism being a particular dislike of mine). But this article was favorably quoting something along the lines of its better to imagine (i.e. make things up) other countries and people than to actually visit them.

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      2. The reverse of this is a friend of mine – who is anti-zoo.
        Telling me with all seriousness that ‘It’s much better to see the animals on safari, in Africa’.
        Well, yes, it may be – but, really, she’s the only one I know with enough money to do this. Don’t the rest of us deserve the chance to see a cheetah, or a lion IRL? Or are the poor condemned to only view online….

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  4. I just stayed four days in scenic Buffalo County Nebraska, and I’m guessing they have a similar issue with tourism overwhelming the local economy.

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    1. We really do have quite significant infrastructure issues here in NZ – with tourism.

      Small communities in picturesque places (e.g. Franz Joseph – tiny town of around 300 residents – which is the jumping off point for the popular tourist destination of Franz Joseph glacier) – literally don’t have the rating (local tax) base to support the tourism infrastructure required for thousands of tourists a day.
      Sales tax (from money the tourists might spend in the town, or on the guided tours) – goes directly to the Government – which is most reluctant to disperse money for tourism infrastructure.

      The same holds true for boring (but necessary) things like building toilets for tourists freedom camping in remote areas. The local government is reluctant to spend their tax take on building, maintaining and managing infrastructure which is only used by tourists – and largely by ones who aren’t even spending much money, locally. They’d rather invest in town sewerage systems, or libraries, or local roads – which benefit their permanent residents (who, after all, pay those taxes).

      There is a strong push for much higher border charges for non-Kiwis visiting – which can be used to support this tourism infrastructure. But no action as yet.

      The NZ government seems to be in two, diametrically opposed, minds over tourism.
      On the one hand – tourism is a huge revenue stream for NZ – and helps pay for all of the overseas imports that Kiwis want (computers, cellphones, cars, etc.).
      On the other hand, the green faction thinks that tourism (especially via air – which is virtually the only way to get to NZ) is a bad thing from the global warming perspective – and tourists should be actively discouraged [cynical me notes, that these Green politicians are still happy for themselves to travel by air….]

      We have an election later this year (much too tight to call at this stage) – and there may be some clarity emerging [cynical me, says, probably not….]

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