Life on Twitter

    For the last year my number of Twitter followers has been stuck at just below 20,000.  Last month I made a new effort to get above it.  Lately I've been reposting a lot of Tweets by Palestinians requesting funding for refugee relief and been getting a lot of likes and re-reposts as a result, giving me the chance to follow new accounts and hope they'll follow me back.  Unfortunately, the geniuses in charge of Twitter have restricted me several times because of my aggressive following.  As a result, there have been several posts where I commented, "I'd like/repost this post, but Twitter thinks I'm a bot." Then I add one of dozens of emojis because bots wouldn't be capable of such originality.

    Despite these obstacles, I did manage to break 20K!  But soon after Twitter launched a purge of dubious accounts so I lost several hundred followers, like Sisyphus' stone rolling back to the bottom of the hill. (Ain't it the way?)  But I haven't given up on regaining 20K.  I subscribed to Circleboom, then changed to Fedica, both to analyze my Twitter numbers.  First I found out which accounts I'm following that don't follow me back, and unfollowed most of them.  Now I'm figuring out which ones have been inactive for six months, and unfollowing the ones who have written the fewest posts.  I've also found out which accounts follow me that I wasn't following back, and followed a few of them.

    I've started posting on Bluesky as well.  I like the space pics there.

    Right now I'm reading Alex Rowell's We Are Your Soldiers:  How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World for my History Meetup.  It's pretty depressing, really:  Nasser was a bit of a fascist megalomaniac.

    I've started a new Meetup for listening to classic music.  Last Saturday we listened to Chopin pieces on YouTube for two hours and the response was positive.  Next month I'll do Christmas music and try to find less familiar pieces.

    At the Sunday afternoon history salon we've been talking about modern Japan. (We've also eaten out a couple of times, at a Turkish restaurant then a Japanese ramen place.)

    In a couple of weeks my French Culture Meetup will be discussing the French Revolution, so I'm about to read a book from the "A Short Introduction" series on that subject! (I recently showed Diabolique for the French movie watch party, and next month will be Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, which seems appropriate for Christmas.)