I started tweeting during the summer of 2011. It was the summer after the Fukushima nuclear disaster; the Blackberry Riots in England raged; Hurricane Irene ravaged our east coast; the launch of the Endeavour marked the end of the USA space shuttle program; Libyan citizens overthrew and assassinated Muammar Gaddafi; Navy Seals killed Osama Bin-laden; the Tea Party rocketed to prominence in the 2010 elections; Obama-Care ignited its roll-out and a ramp-up of a GOP war of opposition; etc., etc.; on and on. There was a lot to tweet about.
In the first thirty days, my follower base grew from zero to over one-hundred. This fast start made such an impression on me that I ended up tweeting for almost three years, trying pretty much everything I could think of to enlarge my follower base even more. But, try as I did, my followers never numbered more than 275. What was most discouraging: three-fourths of them, on closer inspection, didn’t seem to be real people. They were organizations, or marketers, selling things like books and self-improvement programs.
Today I use twitter to follow lists of people and organizations I’ve collected to help me keep-up in subjects that interest me like science, politics, religion, government and French language. The enthusiasm of the early days has faded. It no longer matters if anyone follows me or not. I rarely tweet anything anymore.
Twitter announced they would send a complete list of a tweeter’s tweets to any tweeter who requested them. I took them up on it. The following tweets are a sample from the first 30-days of my twitter history. I tweeted a lot of interesting tweets back in the day, it now seems, mostly to bots.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 1 – My first tweet, everybody. Let me know if it worked.
I’m tweeting in bed. Have signed-up to follow lots of cool people & organizations. Seems to be working good.
I think the rich thought they would recoup Iraq war costs thru mineral/oil acquisitions. Oops!
I’m loving Twitter!
Immersed in fields and waves, we create the material world by observing them.
The old Confederacy (the New Tea Party) won’t be led by a colored man.
After WW2, the rich rewarded our young soldiers by loaning money for college and homes. They built the middle class their grandkids forgot.
Khan Academy is brain candy.
People who hate, hate Obama.
If we live long enough, we will lose everything.
Nuclear power plants must be monitored until the end of time — especially important after we shut them down.
Republicans axed unit pricing in Michigan. We can’t tell what something costs after buying it and tossing the receipt!
Fox is nasty! Surprised they didn’t run a pic of the President eating watermelon.
Africa, if you build it you will own it until the end of time. A nuke plant can be shut down but never abandoned.
Michigan is an oasis on a warming planet.
If life started on Mars and transplanted to earth on debris from an asteroid hit, it might take two planets to advance complex life.
A long time ago the atmosphere was so thick and oxygenated that dragonflies with three-foot wingspans flourished.
When you are ready to retire, lowering the retirement age will seem right to you.
Are tea-bag staples made from heavy-metals? My tea tastes funny.
Do people eat Vanilla Wafers in Britain? There’d be fewer riots.
Five Guys fries, yellow mustard and an ice-cold beer…come on!
Have been tweeting for 8 days and have 35 followers already. If I wasn’t blocking hookers, I would have a hundred!
If Japan could start over, would they build plants to recycle plutonium from NUCLEAR WEAPONS?
“Aroint thee, thou rump-fed ronyons!” Shakespeare.
Michigan is a clean water refuge on a warming dirty planet. Come to Michigan!
Ducks and geese spread sticky fish eggs from lake to lake with their feet sometimes.
Save yourselves from global warming. Come to Michigan!
I’ve tweeted 9 days now. I have 51 followers, and not one of them is a hooker or a relative. Wow!
Eliminate disease and old age. Eliminate birth. In 50,000 years everyone will be dead due to accidents. We can’t keep ourselves alive.
All I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied. And be a simple kind of man, someone you can love and understand. Good lyric.
For 1,000th time: where’d daddy go? He died, momma. Why’d he do that? He got old, momma.
Manual labor can be euphoric. I mowed my lawn today. My neighbors are euphoric.
Mmmmm….who is this girl with ‘slut’ in her domain-name & no tweets?
Tonight, in CIV5, I will use nuclear weapons to destroy Genghis Khan. Ha!Ha! Ha!Ha! (burp!).
In the 10 days since I started tweeting, I’ve learned there are some wonderful beautiful people in Twitterville.
Rupert Murdoch of Fox News conspired to throw a USA presidential election, it’s alleged.
I am luckier than most men. My wife loves me.
My kids are kind of stupid and kind of rich. It’s not right.
Greenpeace: Our monitoring team in Japan is finding high levels of radiation in Japanese seafood.
Why would you spray mosquitoes when you have an army of frog volunteers eager to eat them? No spray!
This is my 10th tweeter day. Amazed by what I see & learn.
All I want in this life is to be heard. I love twitter!
If we can’t have intelligent conversations with dolphins, how are we going to have them with aliens?
Chimps fight. They have their reasons.
If you become very wise, people stop listening. By then you are insane anyway.
Je n’ai pas confiance des hommes puissantes qui me disent le socialisme est pour les perdants.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 11 – a favorite unfollowed me. Don’t know why.
Accidentally discharged ‘safe for humans & pets’ bug spray into my face, mouth, and eyes.
Corporations, like insects, lack empathy and are constantly feeding.
USA opinion makers hate baby-boomers. Why? They know too much.
RT @YourAuntDiane: I’m walking around taking trash out of public garbage cans, painting the trash, then putting it back in the garbage…
When an ex-girl friend called to say she was pregnant I thought, worse news ever. 25 years later I know it was one of my best days, ever.
I’m the only old person I know who has nice toenails.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 12 – wife complains about possible twitter addiction. Can’t worry about that now. 5 new followers!!
My nightmare: eating fish heads and dirty rice while watching Fox News on 60″ plasma TV.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 12.5 – despite tasteless tweets and mindless prattle with celebrities, follower base is growing.
Frog to his mistress: I want to know you. I want to know every slimy wart-covered part of you…
Romney says corporations are people. Demand to see the birth certificates.
Love letter from a frog: I love your bulging eyes, your fat puffy body…the feel of your webbed feet caressing my warts…
TWITTER-LOG: Day 13.5 – feeling remorse for vulgar tasteless stupid tweets.
We cling to the hallucinations of our brains and see particles instead of waves…
We focus on integers when it’s irrational numbers who rule us…
The only best way to observe a field is to move through it…
Tomorrow might be a better day!
TWITTER-LOG: Day 13.75 – Discovered the tweeter “delete” button, finally! Now, I don’t have to kill myself.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 14 – suffering from TBO [twitter burn-out]. Didn’t tweet today but collected 4 more followers.
My son hasn’t changed the oil in his Camaro for over a year. Commodus, your faults as a son is my failure as a father.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 15 – sometimes wonder if people self-disclose too much.
When Cepheids dim, is it because they become more opaque or more transparent?
In a bubble-chamber, how much larger is the bubble than the “particle” that generated it?
Feynman talks about living in a wave pervasive space… http://t.co/yo443O1
You can describe green by math to a blind person who will then know everything & nothing about it. Feynman http://t.co/yZQRR5J
TWITTER-LOG: Day 16 – where are the sad places in twitter-world? …find the voices…who in this valley sheds the poison tears…?
The less you pay “the help” the harder they work & the more efficient your business. It’s a win/win all around.
Eliminating social security/Medicare helps elderly be more self-reliant & lowers the tax burden. It’s a win/win all around.
GOP leaders know when they smite their enemies on the “other cheek” they not only hurt them, but it’s in the Bible.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 17 – tossed out some “political” tweets. Lost a few, gained a few (followers, that is).
Obama is gracious toward adversaries; works hard; sincere; informed, smart, educated. These are virtues, GOP!
Obama took out Bin-laden, and you didn’t. So shut up! Obama isn’t “the worst danger facing the USA.” You are, GOP.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 17.5 – seems like copious tweeters & celebrities have the most followers.
Lagrangian method to discover differential equations is magic… here’s why it works. http://t.co/oRlpYc0
TWITTER-LOG: Day 19 – posted a math instructional video… lost followers…
Grand-daughters refuse McDonalds for lunch. Say it makes you fat. What?
@profbriancox Are there any subatomic particles that can be detected twice?
@profbriancox In Young experiment, if emitter is moved off-center to one side, do detectors behind slits see changed hit ratios?
@ProfBrianCox Is it not true that a soap-bubble, passing a phalanx of bubble detectors, will be detected only once by only one detector?
TWITTER-LOG: Day 19.5 – picked up 11 followers today, 7 tweeter-marketers…no hookers, no relatives…
During Depression, USA had 25% unemployed, but women weren’t counted. Otherwise, rate would have been closer to 75%.
Quantum intuition: imagine particles as soap bubbles with oscillating surface waves. Bubble stretches to fill space but can “pop” only once on only one detector. Some paradoxes resolve.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 20 – Sometimes tweeting feels like tossing into the vast ocean a little message in a bottle. Who will find? Who will read?
TWITTER-LOG: Day 20.5 – am thinking there might be a point where twitter peeps reach a critical mass & start multiplying geometrically.
Planck length defined at 35 decimal places. Irrational Pi forces a quantum bubble (that wants to be round) to oscillate.
Genes can spread among species by viruses. Expect hi-level intelligence to become pervasive over next million years or so.
Starving Columbian missionary wakes up to find tape worm crawling out of his throat seeking food, wife just told me.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 21 – seems like tweeters use weekends to cull follower herds. Those culled never told why.
Qaddafi needs to pursue a new career but unfortunately for him, his views aren’t extreme enough to become a Fox News commentator.
Lied to get away to tweet for an hour…oops! Just got caught.
Let’s do a “maximum wage.” Set it to 1,000 times minimum wage. Then watch Congress raise minimum wage fast.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 22 – feeling like my tweeter legs are finally beneath me, planted firmly in the twitter air!
Military school used to be where parents sent their sons to avoid desegregation.
To celebrate Bin-laden kill, blocked Fox. Quit Xanax. I feel good!
TWITTER-LOG: Day 23 – Incredible. After 23 days of idiotic tweeting, 84 people I’ve never met follow me. In a year they could be millions!
After USSR collapsed in the 80’s, recall reading USA bought their earthquake weapon to keep it out of terrorist hands. Maybe there were 2.
Tesla earthquake machine… http://t.co/5bfrGJW
Pravda article about HAARP geophysical weapon… http://t.co/VKHFbQb
TWITTER-LOG: Day 24 – sometimes someone follows me who has thousands of followers but no tweets. Who are these people? What do they want?
Y U NO FORROW ME? CUZ I NO TREET RIKE U?
One of the best non-math explanations of light to be found… http://t.co/2DwMAtm
Cheney said his book would make “heads explode.” He wrote the book to blow up people’s heads! How cruel.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26 – tweeted about lost dog & fawn. Now receive tweets from animal lovers who don’t follow me. How does Twitter do it?
Since bees are attracted by UV light, would spreading sunscreen on flowers make them invisible to bees? Someone do the experiment & get back to me.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.25 – tweeting a complex idea is not so hard if you leave stuff out & simplify.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.5 – Tweeters cull their follower herds on weekends.
Michigan has clean water, clean air and lakes you can drink from. It does not have hurricanes and 100-degree weather.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.75 – My greatest fear is that someone might un-follow me.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.8 – Too immersed in Twitter, wife says. Can’t worry about that now. Finding new ways to enhance follower base.
NBC, CBS, NBC, etc. love to cover weather, because all they have to do is look at satellite pics & make up stuff. Maybe look outside once in a while.
You might be rich if you always take steaks and lobsters to potlucks.
You might be rich if the local swim club holds swim-meets in your family pool.
You might be rich if it takes six guys with moving van a week to steal enough stuff for you to notice.
You might be rich if the only way to your house is by helicopter.
A small piece of light with just the right color can dislodge an electron. Does that make it a particle? No.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 27 – no one in my family follows me. They don’t want to encourage my twitter obsession. Who needs family? 98 followers!
One of the most controversial & censored movies ever. Oliver Reed & Vanessa Redgrave. 1971; Devils. http://t.co/szuL64C
Have contracted either dengue fever, West Nile virus, bacterial meningitis, esophageal cancer, or swimmer’s ear.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 27.5 – got my 100th follower today. Feel serene & deeply comforted.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 28 – added twitter traffic makes hurricane, earthquake, & nuclear meltdown “venues of opportunity” to harvest additional followers.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 28.5 – changing profile pic entails a risk to my follower base I’m unwilling to take at this time.
Anyone who hasn’t figured out that Fox News is a brainwashing mental institution wants to be lied to.
Saw mentally challenged woman splashing at the beach. She kept saying to no one in particular, “I’m having fun! I’m having fun!” Don’t know why I started crying.
When we tweet, though we be infested by lice and every sundry sort of squirmin’ vermin, we become beautiful, like birds.
Wife accuses me of being deaf. What she can’t see is, I’m also blind.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 28.75 – having mastered follower and blocking tools, I am now more confident than ever that only beautiful people will live within my twitter sphere.
If geometry is quantum — that is, granular — then no irrational numbers can exist in physics. They round to 35 places. Imagine the implications. http://t.co/AWXKIIE
Objects that want to be round can’t do it in quantum (granular) space. Due to a forced round-off of PI, they must oscillate between two real boundaries.
Quantum oscillations are incredibly small compared to anything we know. But a granular quantum geometry demands them.
We love billionaires, because their PR bureaucracy brainwashes us.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 29 – tweeters keep tweeting me profile pics of people I follow saying they found a hilarious pic of me. I don’t get it.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 29.5 – am finding that tweeters are kind and gentle sorts who encourage my creativity right up to the very moment they block me.
TWITTER-LOG: Day 30 – have gained new respect for what it really means to have two or three hundred followers.
Tweet! Tweet! TWEET!! TWEET!! TWEET!!! HaHa! HaHa! Tweet! Tweet! TWEET! TWEET! AGAIN, AGAIN! TWEET. Ha! All done.
Billy Lee