michael_nielsen

I love following people who will share the strange and the unexpected. @Oniropolis & @UrbanFoxxxx & @devonzuegel on cities. @timhwang & @atlasobscura on everything.

I love following people who are relentless optimists and idealists and fallibilists - most of the people on my https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/lists/tomorrow … list.

I love following people who are making amazing things, or incredible art - people like @ncasenmare, @3Blue1Brown, @starsandrobots, and @quasimondo.

I love following people who are generous and positive and inspiring, people like @juliagalef and @TheFrankOzJam.

A great question in all fora is "What is conversation for?" Honestly answering the question for myself is sometimes confronting! And it's interesting to think about what other people may be using conversation for, their implicit (or maybe explicit) models.

There are Twitter uses who use it: to complain, often as a means of tribal bonding (many complaints about politics and social issues); to nitpick; to be outraged; to establish their superiority in some way.

Politics on Twitter is particularly strange. Many otherwise extremely bright people suffer from Dunning-Krugeritis on this: they think they're insightful, but constantly tweet recycled talking points I can hear in a million other places.

(Yes, I'm guilty of all of this on occasion! Working on it!)