The interesting inanities of crowds

1. I've finally worked out what Twitter is for. I've tried following people on it, and I've even briefly tried tweeting, but neither of these interested me. What you want to do instead is go to some Twitter analysis tool, for example trendsmap.com which annotates a google world map with tag clouds of words frequently used in tweets from specific areas. Of late in the UK there's been lots of "cancelled", "freezing" and "bothered", but also "nexus" on the day the new Google Nexus was announced. Today most UK cities seem to have something about "curry" and things relating to the football attack in Togo, plus things relating to CBB7. I like that in Newcastle many people's tweets include "@joemcelderry91". Also I have learnt that the yout' these days says "lool" or "loool" or even "looool". I assume that's because of the natural human urge to make words longer -- I did find something that said that lool is for Laughs Outrageously Out Loud, but I suspect that's a false etymology. In New York the kids say "lmaooooo" and seem to be talking a lot about going to "ihop", which google tells me is a pancake restaurant. Anyway now I have found this I want to contribute to this huge largely anonymous cloud of data (but I'm not sure I can quite bring myself to churn out tweets of the necessary dullness for fear that some poor soul actually reads them). It reminds me of one of my favourite Pet Shop Boys songs, a Chris Lowe one about the attractions of being One of the Crowd:


2. Well, I think it's a shame that Adam and Joe are leaving BBC Radio 6 for an unspecified length of time, because they're quite amusing. Here is Adam in his shed:


3. Lady Gaga's next single is going to be Alejandro, which I have embedded before, but which I am embedding again because it's Great.