h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do you Twitter? Is Tweeting your thing?

If you do, I assume you know to follow @h2g2_Guide. That's our 'official' place on the bird-wire. We tweet out Guide Entries, Post articles, and hashtag-related snark. Mostly, that's me and SashaQ doing our best to let the world know about h2g2. We appreciate all the retweets and countersnark from Icy North and others.

If you want to get to the Post Editor, my handle is @d_gheorgheni, and yes, I had to look it up. It's like your phone number: you never call yourself.

Whom else might you usefully follow? Here are some of the Twitter feeds I find worth my while.

@MerriamWebster - These are dictionary people in the US, so you'll have to put up with Noah Webster's spelling. MW regularly troll the White House by correcting their (mis)use of 'the best words'. MW also tweet out interesting definitions and word discussions. Today, the topic was 'Xennial', the term to describe people born between 1977 and the mid-80s. The problem is how to pronounce it. Cool stuff.

@WilliamSternberg - You actually know this guy, but as Willem. Willem's tweeting out paintings, which, as you know, he's pretty good at. Get a daily Wildlife pic.

@NASA - Because...space pictures. Funny astronauts. Keeping up with launches. Do we have to explain?

@BrentSpiner - The actor who played Data on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. He's a witty tweeter, and a clever guy. It's not about self-promotion with him.

@mewo2 - That's Martin O'Leary, our favourite glaciologist. He teaches at the University of Swansea. He also creates really weird Twitterbots. One generates imaginary landscape maps, suitable for illustrating your fantasy novel. Another, called 'Dictionarish', churns out dictionary definitions that Flann O'Brien and James Joyce might have enjoyed. We steal his Stuff all the time, with his express permission, of course. Watch the Post later in the month for a new map based on his work.

@snopes - The Snopes.com people tweet out investigations, corrections, and updates to urban legends and fake news of the day. Possibly the most useful site on the interwebs, apart, of course, from h2g2.

@RobbieStamp42 - Keep up with Robbie's continuing war against evil AIs. We're betting on him to win!

@TheOnion - The Onion bills itself as 'America's Finest News Source.' Today, a headline read, 'A single bolt of lightning contains enough energy to cook 12 spaghetti carbonaras.' Following The Onion will guarantee a good laugh when you open Twitter.

As you can see, using Twitter doesn't necessarily involve engaging in ad hominem attacks against newsmakers. It doesn't require you to tell your life story. And you can easily avoid reading anything depressing. Just don't click on the hashtag column on the left. Although right now, #DaylightSavingTime is trending in the US. I suspect my fellow Americans have just discovered that they need to set their clocks back. This is good: unlike the Germans, we always forget.



PS Clicking on #DaylightSavingTime yields a gem of a photo of a geek in a NASA t-shirt fiddling with a circuit board full of wires. Caption: 'Don't forget to set your bombs back one hour.' O-kay. . .

Thanks for these ... I'll check out those others ... but it's @WillemSternberg not @WilliamSternberg!

Thanks for the correction, Willem!

Excellent roundup - thanks DG

For irreverent IT and other geeky news, I recommend The Register @TheRegister

They have a unique slang which permeate their articles (Fanboi = Apple enthusiast, Fondleslab = tablet device). When a sservice goes down they describe it as 'Total Inability To Support Usual Performance" - well, they use the acronym.

Running gags include unusual units of measurement (Belgium, Wales, Olympic-sized swimming pools, etc)

They also love crazy titles for articles. Suggestive and alliterative ones occur regularly.

Sounds great for the jokes alone. Thanks for the tip!