Aggregating and Curating Twitter: Missing Tools? Weblogging...
**Help us, @Ev Kenobi! You are our only hope!
Why do I find it such an enormous pain-in-the-@## to aggregate and curate Twitter in any useful way?
Is there some magic internet tool that everybody has access to that I have somehow escaped learning about?
For example: Over on Twitter this morning I note two things:
First, Journalism School:
@monkbent: This wonderful story about the value @jyarow got out of journalism applies 100% to an MBA too http://www.businessinsider.com/i-went-to-journalism-school-and-you-should-too-maybe-2015-3#ixzz3UB93wlDq
@monkbent: If you can get into the field you want without a graduate degree, don't get a graduate degree. If you can't, do!
@mattyglesias: @monkbent You should charge $29,000 for this advice, and dole it out over nine months!
@monkbent: I'm a shitty MBA :(
@davidpham5: @monkbent Dumb question: couldn't one just major in business school and skip the MBA? If undergrad journalism is just fine, skip the MA in Journamalism?
@monkbent: .@davidpham5 Right. We're talking about folks that don't figure out where they want to be until late-20s and need boost
@delong: .@monkbent @mattyglesias whatever happened to “start a blog, become an expert, say smart things, and wait to get noticed”? Much cheaper!
@monkbent: @delong @mattyglesias that's me! But without school and the experience I got at Apple and Microsoft, my writing wouldn't be as good
@Yaneznaiu: @davidpham5 @delong @monkbent it would not be a good business decision to incur a large amount of debt for a rather dubious revenue stream
That is vastly better than what appears in your standard comments section. And I would like a quick and easy way to curate Twitter threads like these and post them as permanent, easily-searchable comments to related posts. But it is enormously time-consuming to create something like the list of tweets above. And tools... Storify is almost there, I think, at times, but not quite. Am I missing something obvious?
So how does one semi-automate the flow of relevant, interesting discussion that now takes place on Twitter, curate it, and put it someplace where we can then search it and be reminded of it when appropriate?
Help us, @Ev Kenobi! You are our only hope!
Second: Trans-Pacific Partnership:
@delong: .@KevinNR RE: Join Obama on Pacific Trade http://bit.ly/18BBbm7 (1/5) I wouldn't say "hatred" so much as "fear"--fear of somehow losing control. We saw this in the WTO debate. There the Naderites demagogued how we were going to hand over our food safety to a committee with lots of Europeans on it.
GMO-fearing organic-loving Europeans.
The fact that such a committee would be more sympathetic to hippie-food-nature concerns than an FDA subject to intensive lobbying for Cargill and company was neither here nor there. It was fear of giving up control to furriners that ruled.
BTW, RU worried about IP provisions?@delong: Dean Baker on the TPP: Super-Early Monday DeLong Smackdown Watch http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/03/dean-baker-on-the-tpp-monday-delong-smackdown-watch.html http://pllqt.it/7HcJ59
@ZaidJilani: @delong Dean isn't anti-globalization. Almost no one opposing TPP is. In fact, it's a global coalition. Most opposition to it comes from the terms and rent-seeking. Remember, we already trade with all those countries.
@delong: .@ZaidJilani really? Looks to me like many of the usual suspects who were opposed to NAFTA & WTO. Fear the Codex Alimentarius!
@ZaidJilani: .@delong Are you really saying that changes to the law that would subject people to death by making prescription drugs too expensive are equivalent to truthers and conspiracy theorists? Most "trade agreements" today aren't about trade. They are about power.
@delong: .@ZaidJilani No, that is not what I am saying. And when I see the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s intellectual property provisions I may swing into opposition. (Are you listening, Maury Obstfeld?) But I was Treasury’s point garbage-catcher for WTO debate in 1994. And there was a huge amount of unbelievable garbage thrown then.
@ZaidJilani: .@delong We already trade with pretty much every country we're negotiating TPP with. Heavily.
“@Pliny_theElder: @delong Wow did NAFTA and the WTO work out for people who are not extremely rich? @ZaidJilani
@ZaidJilani: .@delong Alright fair enough. And there probably are real trade protectionists opposing TPP. But that isn't the bulk of opposition. Particularly abroad, a lot of the opposition comes from intellectual-property people, enviros, not even labor.
@lukerebecchi: @delong @ZaidJilani Meh. I can't help thinking TPP is analogous to Keystone XL. Rail may be more dangerous, but that's not really the point. This is a fight about global capitalism. Maybe TPP would produce a few net jobs, maybe not. But who cares? What is clear is that the TPP is a global capitalist project. Global capitalism isn't to worker's benefits. Therefore, it should be opposed.
@delong: .@ZaidJilani Do you understand why Obama is even doing this? Back in 1993 we could believe “we meet Republicans more than halfway on NAFTA, that creates an environment in which they will meet us halfway on HillaryCare”. It is now impossible for anyone sane to believe in that.
So why carry this water bucket? The free-trade CEA is not powerful. Is Hollywood that powerful inside today’s Democratic Party?@ZaidJilani: .@delong I am not an expert on this issue by any means. But I notice it is much more discussed overseas than here--at least in pop media.
@SeanErnst: @delong @ZaidJilani Yes. By far the most important donor network is headed by the president of Dreamworks. You could call him a kingmaker.
@ZaidJilani: @SeanErnst @delong There are also drug and finance kingpins hoping to use it to expand/contract regulations depending on the law.
@ZaidJilani: .@delong Part of it is foreign policy too--part of the Pivot To Asia. It has probably much larger significance for other countries governments...
@delong: .@ZaidJilani I have not heard that foreign-policy argument much from the administration—-that we want Asia to view us as a benevolent hegemon. Of course, that argument is inconsistent with our bringing the intellectual property hammer down on them very hard…
@CarlNyberg312: Does the secrecy of TPP seem a wee bit anti-democratic? What Elites want is a ruled-based economic system, where the rules are to their advantage and functionally unamendable. The Elites envision a version of democracy where elections are about social issues, not economic policy. @delong @ZaidJilani
@delong: .@CarlNyberg312 @ZaidJilani I am not especially concerned about “secrecy”. Negotiating anything in public is incredibly difficult. And negotiating anything where others can afterwards amend the deal is impossible. We will see it...
@Noahpinion: @delong I'm now reading Pivotal Decade, which does claim that globalization caused the hypertrophy of finance and rise of inequality...
@nick_bunker: @Noahpinion @delong worth reading?
@delong: .@Noahpinion as a trained and practicing psychohistorian, I assure you that history has more inertia than that. Consider how little has been changed by 2008, which was an absolutely huge shock to the system...
@ZaidJilani: @delong @CarlNyberg312 The level of secrecy is weird, as members such as Warren protest. I don't remember other ostensible "trade deals" being negotiated this way.
@CarlNyberg312: Negotiating trade deals in he open is extra difficult when one is harming interests of the citizens. If the trade agreements don't have a process for updating them they are anti-democratic.
@Apinak: @CarlNyberg312 TPP negotiated in secret (with corps), passed with fast-track& little media equals zero public input. @delong @ZaidJilani
@delong: .@Apinak @CarlNyberg312 @ZaidJilani Arguments that each piece of the deal should be negotiated in public and then each provision voted on individually really seem to me to be bad-faith arguments--and signs that there are no good arguments against…
@CarlNyberg312: Banks/Elites use government policy to rig economy, but trade agreements don't get coopted for this? @delong @Apinak @ZaidJilani
@delong: .@CarlNyberg312 @Apinak @ZaidJilani “The modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie” takes you these days to libertarian minarchism, not social democracy. Is that where you want to go?
@ZaidJilani: @delong @Apinak @CarlNyberg312 do you think warren is arguing in bad faith? https://t.co/DuMVDMV1Z2
@delong: I like Warren, but yes I do: experience has taught us that even very good trade deals fall victim to protectionist lobbying unless you deprive losers of their edge in organizing to lobby against
@Apinak: We know, with current politics, there will be no economic help for the many losers from free-trade. @CarlNyberg312 @delong @ZaidJilani
@delong: .@Apinak touché. You are certainly correct on that…
@Apinak: Can also make opposite argument, bad faith to argue FOR an agreement without knowing what it says. @CarlNyberg312 @delong @ZaidJilani
@delong: .@Apinak And that is also correct...
@Apinak: @delong I think it takes you to campaign finance reform. We know the middle class has little influence on policy now. @CarlNyberg312 @ZaidJilani
@delong: And that is also correct…
@delong: .@Apinak But isn’t the answer to strengthen the middle class’s political impact, not to reflexively oppose policiies that might be net pluses?
