Hi from Amsterdam! I'm Alejandro, EiC of TNW, with some (hopefully) interesting reads - let me know what you think!

Hi there!

Sooooo, awkward intro time (are they ever not? Please point me to one that’s not, I’d be very interested): My name is Alejandro, I just turned 30, live in Amsterdam, have three passports (Ecuadorian, German, USA) and a major in physics, was editor of VICE's Motherboard in The Netherlands, and am currently gainly employed as editor-in-chief of TNW, a publication about technology and culture.

As an editor I spend most of my day reading, either the stories we publish ourselves or stories published elsewhere. Most of what I read is useless or ephemeral, not worth more thought than the time spent consuming it. But some of it is.

Maybe because it's smart, maybe because it's interesting, it could be just plain funny, or thought-provoking, or insightful either on a personal or societal level: There are a lot of stories out there worth your time.

Now, since I'm reading a lot of it anyway, I thought I'd try out Steemit for sharing some of the stories I find throughout the day. Maybe you'll like them. Maybe you won't. But I think this is an interesting platform and I've been wanting to do this for a while anyway.

There a few things I still need to think of, like a catchy name (was thinking something like The Cybersurf Digest, but what do I know), and maybe recurring formats? But I'd like to do that as I go, with feedback from this community. So please, feel free to tell me what you like or don't like. What you'd like to see more, if I should just share links or also try not to bore you with why I think you should read it, or with stuff that you know that I should read.

To kick this off, here are a few things I read over the holidays:

"Ernest" A socially mediated ghost story

A short story for people who don't think they'd read a short story. It's basically about what would happen if this xkcd cartoon weren't true, and a family would find a ghost and start posting about it on social media:

It's glorious: a painfully funny look into how the internet has changed the way we relate to things that used to scare us. Read it. Or don't - it's also being turned into a movie by Get Out producer Blumhouse, if that's more of your thing.

Bilibili and the wonderfully strange phenomenon called danmu

I've recently been fostering a growing fascination for Chinese internet culture. To me it feels like this enormous beast that evolved completely independently of how we're used to the internet in Europe and the Americas. A whole online parallel universe just begging to be explored.

One great example of applications that are massively popular - and totally exotic - is this platform called Bilibili. It features videos with sidescrolling comments plastered over them by users - sometimes so many that they obscure the video behind them. It's not new, but it's new to me.

The phenomenon is called danmu. Or as TechNode describes it: "The Chinese word “danmu” (or “danmaku” in Japanese) literally means “bullet curtain” and refers to a commentary sharing system in which viewers can plaster comments directly on top of an uploaded video. It was first popularized by Japanese ACG (animation, comic, game) video portal Niconico, which later inspired Chinese ACG websites AcFun and Bilibili."

It's huge and growing. Apparently Bilibili attracts about 100 million daily active users, mostly under the age of 25. According to the Magpie Digest, anyone can watch danmu videos, but to be allowed to actually comment, users have to fill in a "100-question test about danmu etiquette and anime trivia," casually nicknamed "The Chinese Otaku High-school Exam."

I found a few of these questions on some abandonded Trello board, and they are quite challenging - aside from them being translated poorly by Google. The questions range from chemistry:

What is the strongest acid in the world?
A. aqua regia
B. Fluoroantimonic acid
C. Hydrofluoric acid
D. concentrated sulfuric acid

to trivia knowledge of YouTube stars

FPSRussia What is my real name
A. Viktor Reznov
B. Dmitri Potapoff
C. Vladimir Makarov
D. Kyle Myers

to mystifying references of presumably Chinese pop culture

"Come and kill that excited Meng Lolita" This empty ears from?
A. zero magic F
B. Shakugan Shana S
C. A scientific super-electromagnetic gun S
D. sneak it! Nai sub-W

All of this is to "limit membership availability to balance the quality of its user base and moderation capacity," says Wikipedia. @jack (the Twitter one) take note.

I'll surely be coming back to this phenomenon sometime, but the articles linked above should give you a primer if this intrigues you.

No Comment Necessary Link: The End of Hangovers

No Comment Necessary Quote: "That’s right. Everyone is thinking it. LinkedIn is a death cult. Becoming a guy that posts on Linkedin is essentially like joining a religious extremist group, but for first-world people that went to Stanford."

My goal is to get these out at least 3 times a week, also containing more timely news. And let me know what you think! Do you want more links or less, more obscure of more mainstream, less text, tell me. Please.