Prepare to shut the fuck up! Not only is it awful and hilarious, but Eastbound & Down also has consistently brilliant music – here’s a playlist someone’s put together with the best tracks.

If you use this stat, you are a fucking idiot. “96% of the world’s population under 30 years old is connected via Social Media.” Google it.

— eamonncarey (@eamonncarey) May 14, 2012

And thought to myself, “this can’t be true”. (spoiler: it isn’t). However, many, many people cite it as fact. But where did it come from?

The source appears to be from “Social Media Revolution“, one of those text-heavy videos full of amaze balls stats to dazzle marketing teams and convince them how social media will change everything they know. The two “facts” combined are – “Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old” and “96% of them have joined a social network”

The source for the second stat is from this survey, which says ’96% of online teens/tweens report ever having used any type of social networking technology including IM/chat, text messaging and email.’

So, what’s wrong with the stats here?

1. It’s a US only survey, not world-wide
2. It’s of 1,277 children aged 9-17 – not 1 -30
3. It’s of children who were online anyway
4. It includes texting and email as ‘social activity’

It’s a very deceptive (or clumsy – don’t want to presume any motives here) leap to go from asking a few tweens and teenagers who are active online and apply those numbers to an entire planet.

If you grab stats off the internet, please do a tiny bit of research (and in this case use an OUNCE of common sense – I mean seriously? 96%? of the ENTIRE PLANET?) and, like Eamonn says – don’t be a fucking idiot.

Great print of one of my favorite (though incredibly achronistic) movie characters.

Well, yeah, man, you see, like, all the tanks we come up against are bigger and better than ours, so all we can hope to do is, like, scare ‘em away, y’know. This gun is an ordinary 76mm but we add this piece of pipe onto it, and the Krauts think, like, maybe it’s a 90mm. We got our own ammunition, it’s filled with paint. When we fire it, it makes… pretty pictures. Scares the hell outta people! We have a loudspeaker here, and when we go into battle we play music, very loud. It kind of… calms us down.

Avengers Assemble! Tiny Tower Bitizens, this time based on the new Avengers movie.

See also: Firefly/Serenity, Tiny Tower Star Wars Bitizens, Tiny Tower Watchmen Bitizens, Tiny Tower Wonderwoman Bitizen and Tiny Tower Batman and Superman

At the end of my career, I want to ask myself if I’ve been faithful with what I’ve been given—that includes the people and relationships in my life… That equals success to me

Wonderful work and interview on The Great Discontent

“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I think you’re all fucking mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a fucking TV commercial. Nobody give a shit.

A Short Lesson in Perspective. Thought-provoking piece on hard work, creatives, and advertising. They don’t hand out prizes for who spent the least amount of time with their family.

Soul Calibur has a very extensive character creation system. Someone has made a Ron Swanson character.

This pleases me.

Seeing as Walter called me out on it, I’d thought I’d follow up on his post. I guess my point is that just because you don’t like how someone uses Twitter doesn’t mean that they are doing it wrong.

Walter hates people posting from Foursquare (and also sites like GetGlue) so he feels the onus is on them to change. I also hate people posting their Foursquare updates on Twitter, but if that’s what they want to do, I’m fine with it. It’s no big deal to ignore it. I use GetGlue all the time to share what I’m watching, and it’s led to chats and sharing new shows with friends. If people find that annoying, then either unfollow me or get over it.

(I also hate people who tweet about sports all the time. I get it, you’re watching football and people won’t shake hands and whatnot. In an ideally world I’d dictate that all sports tweet have a #sports hashtag so I can filter them out, but I’m not the Twitter police so I just have to filter and ignore.)

He also made some interesting points in his first post about cross-posting and auto-posting. I’d disagree with his definitions. Cross-posting – to me – is posting across networks, so for example your tweets show up in Facebook. Auto-posting is where you do something (like comment on blog, upload a photo or video etc.,) and have it appear as a link in your social network. Both are open to abuse, but if that’s what people want to do that’s fine by me – I can just ignore it.

As to his point about “the effort required to create the content” I totally disagree. I can tweet a quote from my Kindle that I want to share with people – zero effort as I don’t write it – but I still think it has value and is something I choose to share. Same with checking in somewhere, or posting “I’ve commented on the Journal” (there are entire Twitter accounts that just have these tweets) or any other service with a little “Share this on Twitter” toggle. If I choose to share it, then I think it’s relevant. If others don’t, tough.

Walter says that people who post their Foursquare checkins are like people who come to your house and piss on the seat. I’d disagree. It’s like people who you’ve invited to your house telling you they were in Chapter One (Foursquare) and then watched Burn Notice (GetGlue) and how they love that Black Keys song (This is my Jam). If you’re not interested, would you say “Hey stop telling me this shit, I don’t care!”?. Seems rude.

Anyway, it seems a bit silly to tell someone it’s not okay for them to tell other people what’s acceptable or not. Walter, if you don’t like people posting their checkins or whatever, then that’s fine – knock yourself out. I’ll keep on This is my Jamming and GetGlueing because that’s how I choose to use Twitter. And if that’s how your friends and “otherwise interesting people” want to use twitter, then you might just have to live with it.

Here’s a simple piece of HTML & CSS for people using media queries to help with testing and debugging. There’s more dynamic ways with Javascript but for simple testing you might find this useful. All it does is display the size range you’re working in using a bit of HTML and some CSS.

The HTML:

<div id="debug-console">Debug </div>

The base CSS (positions and styles):

/* Debug Info */
#debug-console {
 background: #000;
 bottom:0;
 color: #ff0;
 font-size: 11px;
 font-family: Arial;
 font-weight: bold;
 opacity: 0.8;
 padding:5px 10px;
 position: fixed;
 right:0;
 text-transform: uppercase;
}

#debug-console:after {
 color: #fff;
 font-style: italic;
 text-transform: lowercase;
}

The media queries CSS (edit to suit your needs):

TL;DR: Just add #debug-console:after { content: " whatever you want to show up in the box"; } to the relevant bits of your media queries.

/* Less than 480px */
@media screen and (max-width: 479px) { 
 /* Your styles here */

 #debug-console:after {
 content: " Under 480px";
 }

}

/* Over 480px - 768px */
@media screen and (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 768px) {
 /* Your styles here */

 #debug-console:after {
 content: " Over 480px - Under 768px";
 }

}

/* Over 768px - 1024px */
@media screen and (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1023px) {
 /* Your styles here */

 #debug-console:after {
 content: " Over 768px - Under 1024px";
 }

}