Hello there!

Our household had stomach flu this week and it kinda messed up a lot of plans. So I'm mostly just gonna ramble about Twitter this week.

Polish stuff

Due to the writing course I've been doing, I've been spending a lot of time on Twitter. Like 20 times more than normal 😫 My stats are nice, which is one plus:

When using Twitter, I mostly just see tweets from people on the course, but I can't help but notice some of the trending hashtags. When I login, I see stuff trending in Poland, and the tag #StopUkranizacjiPolski was going pretty strong for a while, which was depressing (it means "Stop the Ukrainianisation of Poland"). Whether these posts were by genuine xenophobes or merely Russian bots was of course an open question.

Either way, I feel like the Poles that are on Twitter are on odd bunch. In the UK and US, Twitter is the go-to network for journalists and scientists, and a lot of news and discussion there makes sense and is part of the cultural narrative. Elon Musk even called it the "town square" repeatedly when he was buying Twitter (before he changed his mind, cheeky bugger). I haven't noticed this sense of purpose to the same extent in Poland. I think Polish journalists and scientists just use Facebook like the majority of Poles, leaving Polish Twitter to trolls and bots. Bit of a shame. Or perhaps the algorithm just likes serving me terrible divisive content, almost as if it's designed to... 🤔

Not Polish stuff

I'm gonna contradict the standard view of Twitter that I submitted above. Yes, although it is beloved by journos, is it really essential for their work? Do you need to be on Twitter to be a journalist?

The New York Times used to make all of its reporters start accounts on Twitter and trained them how to use it effectively. But the paper has recently changed its mind quite significantly because their reporters get harassed on there, and it's kinda the paper's fault they're using it in the first place.

It's also interesting looking at the recent Pew Research study about the differences in how journalists use Twitter in comparison to the general public. Does it point to Twitter being where journalism happens, or that it's simply an echo chamber? You tell me.

But I am very tired of Twitter this week. Maybe it's because of the stomach flu. Making lemonade from these lemons, one of my short essays on Twitter was about one overlooked benefit of stomach flu that I've taken advantage of...

Podcast recommendation of the week

It turns out people are now selling houses that come with cryptocurrency miners as part of the utilities. What the hell does this even mean? Planet Money explains all in this short funny episode called Little House on the Blockchain in which you can hear people's varied reactions to being told the house they are looking to buy might dig digital oil for them.

Okay, enough fun stuff. I have to go reply to messages on Twitter 😓

Have a great week!

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / Procrastilearning.com / More stuff

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