I am not a good swimmer. I have been in and around the water my entire life. I started SCUBA diving two decades ago. I’m perfectly capable of staying afloat, getting from A-to-B and all that. It might not be fast or especially efficient, though. And, most tellingly, I am not a lap swimmer.
That’s something to work on. I hit the pool this evening and swam a mile. I’m pretty sure that’s the most I’ve ever swam at one time. And if it isn’t, it is close.
A mile in the campus pool is 72 lengths, 36 laps. While I was there in lane two there was a youth swim team practice going on in most of the pool. Lane one was occupied by two ladies enjoying the opportunity to chat and gossip. On the deck there was a lifeguard. One of those three people had to be. How you could tell which from behind their phones and iPads and laptops, I’m not sure. There was also the sonorously loud swim coach who was emphatic about detail and all of the small things and had no problem singling the kids out for the wrong kick or whatever. When he was talking to them individually he seemed like a thoroughly decent man.
In my lane there was a teenager. And, later, his friend joined him. So, lap swimmers, how many people are you sharing a lane with? Because three people in one space seemed to much to me.
Especially when one of the kids kept moving swapping sides. And then he would swim under and across and it was hard to keep track of him and I found the entire thing annoying. It was my Get Off Of My Lawn moment of the day, something which is beginning to happen a little more frequently. Perhaps I should keep track of them.
But the swimming was nice. I did about 500 yards in a side crawl and the rest in a modified breaststroke, because I can only do so much freestyle right now — about 100, it seems.
The first 18 laps were kind of slow. Somewhere between 24 and 34 things really took off. By then I was almost the last person in the pool. I didn’t time anything, but I swam a mile.
I do not know what is happening.
I had burritos for dinner, vegetables for lunch and I wasn’t nearly as hungry as I expected I would be. I could go stand in the shallow end of a pool for an hour and be starving, ordinarily. Today, not so much.
Things to read which I found interesting: How fast are the entertainment and media industries changing? Pretty darn fast. In a year, Netflix’s competition shifted from Hulu to HBO to everything:
Netflix is simply acknowledging that it doesn’t just compete with other TV networks (although, in another change to the document, Netflix calls itself a “movie and TV series network” for the first time). It also competes for attention with nearly any kind of leisure activity.
That may not seem revelatory, but it’s rare for media companies to think of their competition as extending beyond discrete industries like news or music or television.
I discussed this more than two years ago, but Netflix is a fine platform — we enjoy it — doomed to fail. I said it better this spring: Netflix becomes just another layer in the stratification. The problem is that Netflix, as a pioneer, is inherently reproducible. If you have a smart TV or a streaming Blue Ray or similar opponent, you can see all of the On Demand stations, the branded streaming platforms and even the high end magazines are getting into the act. Everything is a competitor, everything is another vector to take on. Netflix’s purchase, production and streaming of original programming is a strategy to combat that. Will it be enough?
That would be a great story for a writer, right? Here’s a stab at how to, and how not to, pitch that idea over social media:
Social media is a blessing and a curse when it comes to pitching journalists. While Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Instagram — yes, Foursquare and Instagram pitches happen — present many new opportunities to forge connections, it’s very easy to step onto inappropriate turf.
Because the dos and don’ts of reaching out via social media can be messy, we compiled some solid rules for when it’s cool and when it’s creepy to contact a journalist. Here are 10 tips on how to pitch a journalist on social media, largely based on the experiences of Mashable’s editorial team.
Most of those ideas are common sensical, which is precisely why someone needed to write about it.
Speaking of Facebook, people are learning a new way to think of it in a new way:
Here’s the only substantial difference between the information Facebook gave the National Security Agency’s PRISM program and the information Facebook sells to its customers—the NSA didn’t pay for it. In fact, it turns out what Facebook sells could be even more personal than what the NSA requires. And a study that came out yesterday shows Americans are waking up to that possibility.
… the information Facebook and the other eight companies associated with PRISM are sharing with the NSA includes “the content of the communications and not just the metadata.”
Facebook is not our friend.
There are almost 1,000,000 Alabamians on food stamps:
In Alabama, about 914,000 people received SNAP benefits in June, a 61-percent increase from the 567,000 state residents who received them five years ago. That’s similar to increases around the country during the economic downturn.
But the 19 percent of Alabama residents who use SNAP benefits puts the state ahead of the national average of 15.4 percent, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In 2008, before the recession, Alabamians received $663 million in SNAP benefits. By 2012, it was $1.4 billion.
Also, Uh oh: 8 of 12 Alabama metros saw recession in 2012, GDP data show and The typical American family makes less than it did in 1989.
These next two are both great stories, despite basic headlines, which are worth your time. Perhaps the two best things I read today:
You remember the Costa Concordia. The big cruise ship that had the misfortune of having the wrong guy at the helm and then sank off of Italy. They raised it, a historical feat of engineering that took 19 hours. You can see a time lapse here.
One of our students produced this, in part, with his new aerial drone. It was one of his first projects with the thing and, for a first try it looks pretty great:
I want one.
