2010 30
Tweetphorisms
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I’ve been looking back at some of my tweets lately and I’ve compiled a list of tweetphorisms, which are a cross between tweets and aphorisms.
– A good thing about Twitter is that if somebody wants to trash you they only have 140 characters to do so.
– In Europe tipping gets you nowhere, in USA not tipping gets you nowhere.
– One thing I love about my American friends is that they are less jugdemental, more willing to take risks.
– Great leadership is the ability to make followers thrive.
– Creative destruction is much hyped, but non destructive creation is better.
– They should not allow world cup teams to have foreign coaches.
– TV still exists because of simplicity, bandwidth and simultaneity.
– Religion is on its wait out in Europe, hence football.
– Marriages take work. Grass is not greener on the other side. It’s greener where it’s watered.
– Monopolies are like children in an airplane, you complain about them until you have one.
– College must have been traumatic. I graduated in the 80s and still dream I’m not prepared for my Chemistry exam.
– Remember when Twitter was about people saying something? Now it’s all links.
– The value of a secret derives from the relevance of those whom we want to keep uninformed.
– You become 21, turn 30, push 40 and reach 50.
– Contradiction: Americans consume most oil in the world and yet they blame their President for the drilling accident.
– Math is the hardest subject to work hard at.
– Microsoft was easier to hate :).
– Studying photography made me come to terms with cloudy days.
– I am for being tolerant with the intolerant, but it’s hard when the response is death threats.
– Europe needs to eliminate national armies and have just one European Army.
– Some people are afraid of the unknown. I tend to be more afraid of what I know.
– Netflix tells me what I will like, Vuze delivers it.
– Twitter should take pity on those who Tweet in German and give them a few extra characters 🙂
– The French should teach the Italians how to make desserts and in exchange learn how to make coffee.
– The only power left who still disguises economic ambition as ideology is USA. Russia and China gave up.
– The iPad is most useful in situations in which laptops are frowned upon.
– Downturns are great moments to gain market share.
– There’s an inverse relation between how cool you look watching a movie in an iPad and how dorky walking around listening to music.
– It’s not the role of companies to regulate if people date at work or not.
– Parents teach kids to be patient. In the process, they are learning to be patient themselves.
– The paradox of the music industry is that it’s being destroyed out of love for music.
– Most people in power in Europe would rather see Greece sink than the Euro rise again.
– What distinguishes people is not how much shit they have to deal with, but how they deal with it.
– You raise a child until one day you realize…you raised a person.
– 80% of good paternity is showing up. Quality time is a cop out for absent parents.
– Twitter, all the news that’s fit to tweet.
– The iPad is an ideal toilet companion
– When people really want something they have a hard time comprehending it may not be possible
– Restaurant owners believe that there is an inverse relationship between their elegance and your understanding of the menu.
– Link shorteners should use one letter to show whats in them.
– In USA, kids are especially told not to talk to strangers. But as adults they love to 🙂
– Jet lag is a good way of understanding the difference between being tired and wanting to sleep.
– Exams are so traumatic that people keep having nightmares that they show up unprepared decades later
– There are 2 kinds of people who rarely take vacations: those who can’t afford them and those who have a hard time dealing with themselves.
– Android will be very popular because Google does not make a living out of selling hardware.
– If you had a habit of talking to yourself, Twitter is perfect for you.
– It’s great when the person you love… is your wife 🙂
– Smartphones are amazing. But they are not that smart when all you want to do is make a phone call.
– The problem bailing out Greece is that the euro was too strong before the crisis.A weaker euro combined with cheaper oil helps EU.
– When two people in Twitter want to engage they leave. DMs are not enough. Unlimited DMs or DM chat would be better.
– Hillary Clinton may become for all Israelis what Sharon was to Gaza settlers.
– Design is not great when it clashes with use. Example? iPhones that fall out of pockets.
– Something tells me that it was not “the keyboard cat” what Chad had in mind when starting Youtube.
– Electricity consumption’s been down 5% in Europe since the crisis. Recessions are good for the environment.
– One of the weaknesses of Twitter is that it’s such a pain to always click on links.
– If you oppose to animal testing in medicine you favor human testing in medicine, or no progress in medicine.
– As it becomes widely used Twitter needs to raise the character limit to 200.
– USA should not have China finance its wars, it should have China fight them.
– Friendship is about people you know, dating is about people you don’t know, Facebook is evolving from friendship to dating.
– USA has the richest people in the world. Europe has the “richest” poor people in the world.
– English is the most widely spoken language. That also makes it the language that is most frequently spoken poorly.
– Twitter, or a life worth sharing.
– Europeans want equality, Americans equal opportunity, Asians don’t seem too keen on either.
– Cable, telephone, mobile, Internet, newspapers, magazines, games and music industries did indeed converge in the end.
– Google is about linking to other sites. Twitter is about linking to other sites. Facebook instead warns you about the Internet.
– Models are hired to appeal to women. They are women who women like. Most men like actresses more than models.
– Scientists in USA are admirable because all scientists are, but also because average folks in this country mistrust science.
– The problem with Twitter is that all watch what everyone else is doing and as a result…nobody does anything.
– First we had phone, SMS, email, then Skype, Gtalk, Facebook, Twitter, Buzz. I need new tech to start replacing old tech!!
– You can tell when somebody uses a Kindle because they stop counting pages and say: “I have 7% left to read”.
– The best argument against nuclear energy is that it’s used as an excuse by Iran and others for making nuclear weapons.
– Memories are the leftovers of experience
– We can use randomized controlled trials not just to test medicines but for social problems too.
– San Francisco can be seen as “at the edge of the tech world” or “the edge of the planet” 🙂
– Sometimes it is best to leave a book unfinished and imagine the rest.
– Haiti’s problems did not start with the earthquake, but they came to light with it.
– Religion exists because the truth is unbearable.
– America excels at the extremes. Europe focuses on raising the average.
– Most successful products are self evident.
– Blackberries are for work, iPhones for fun, Androids are somewhere in the middle.
– Anyone who tries to make a tablet without something like the iTunes Store will have a hard time competing against Apple.
– Twitter used to be a community of people who shared info, now it’s more and more a one to many broadcasting platform.
– After Law School you are a lawyer. After Med School you are a Dr. But after Business School you are not an entrepreneur.
– Facebook is meaningless unless you know the people whose crap you read about.
– Writers block is passé, now it’s Twitter block.
– Emotion can be great motivation for writing, but it can backfire when you are trying to make a point.
– USA and Europe design, China makes.
– Terrorists attack USA partly because it is easily spooked.
– Uruguay is a country with no news to report. No news is good news.
– Safety with little police presence is a sign of civilization.
– Countries around here are either free and poor (St. Lucia) or colonies (Martinique) and rich. So much for freedom 🙁
– Twitter: gossip never had it so good.
– The crying baby, the snoring man, two dreaded characters on night flights.
– Even though China is the biggest polluter in the world it still has the right to sell carbon credits to much cleaner Japan.
– Airline punctuality figures should include airport immigration expected delays.
– Some of the brightest people I know can’t spell.
– Most large exporters of energy are LDCs (less democratic countries)
– Spending a lot of time on Twitter makes you more informed but less knowledgeable.
– Twitter + links = Facebook – search
– Obama’s Nobel Prize speech should have been about racial reconciliation, not about justifying military action.
– Climate change may be disastrous. But we have a global sanitation, education, malnutrition and disasters now, first things first!
– Speed limits should relate to traffic. No traffic, higher speed limits.
– Twitter is like Facebook in fast motion.
– Twitter: speed dating of the intellect.
– Facebook is very expensive to run but has a business model. Twitter is very cheap to run but has not found one yet.
– Zapatero does not speak English, lives in the old media world and out of ignorance managed to turn the blogosphere against him.
– Apple is the only company that managed to go on with desktops.
– The success of Spotify in Spain shows that even in a country in which downloading is legal there’s a business model for music.
– Europe sees immigrants as people to train. Americans also see them as people to learn from. Guess where they prefer to go?
– In Spain some under 20s are on Facebook, none on Twitter, and all on Tuenti.
– I still can’t understand how the country of the 35 hour work week came up with the word entrepreneur.
– The worst weather is when it’s almost freezing but instead of snowing…it rains. Just shy of profitability.
– If a country has social mobility and recession many can be better off even in bad times. But Europe is screwed at this level.
– If anything Obama is proving that it is much harder to be a good President than a bad one.
– The crisis does have something positive: it is a boom for entrepreneurship.
– Whenever I don’t get a reference I think it must be Star Trek, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.
– Here we are squeezing our thoughts on Twitter because somebody a decade ago decided to limit SMS to 140 characters.
– Nations who won’t negotiate with terrorists shouldn’t pay pirates off
– People who don’t like photos of themselves: those who like themselves too little and those who like themselves too much.
– Twitter used to be microblogging. Now blogging is an extended tweet.
– Murdoch should not forego Google, if anything he should do the RSS thing and give them the headlines.
– The genius of the iPhone can be perceived during the brief time when you finish a charge and the battery runs out.
– Nobody ever made more money than Chaplin portaying misery.
– Spain has holidays that relate to each city. Next Monday, for example, is a holiday only in Madrid. All holidays should be national.
– Software upgrades offer significant risks in exchange for minor improvements.
– Whoever forces people to write http:// before a web site name should be spanked (Tom says shot).
– Big TV displays are begging for wireless connectivity to your laptop.
– The better I do the less I have to tweet about.
– Successful companies turn out to have many “cofounders”.
– Twitter gives you a unrealistic feeling of being famous.
– At the end of life few are sorry they did not spend more time at the office.
– The only really white people on the planet are the British 🙂
– There is so much to learn when you know very little!
– Canada, USA, Japan, Australia, other wealthy nations should allow free movement of labor as EU does already.
– Europe is about class struggle. USA about generational struggle.
– Overheard on Twitter: To want to prove that God exists with a Bible is like wanting to prove that Batman exists with a comic.
– Facebook should allow you to gift pictures.
– Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world after Chinese and slightly ahead of English
– Book authors will be like musicians. Books will be free on the net but authors will make money from public speaking.
– Never underestimate the power of a good story
– I never liked a TV series so much not to wait to watch it when I wanted to.
– Nobel Institute has just awarded itself the Obama Prize
– If you follow people in different continents, Twitter gives you a real sense for time zones. When I wake up California goes silent.
– If you know what you want to listen to go for Spotify, if you want to discover music use Last.fm.
– I have a dear friend who is not on Facebook. He is the last one standing.
– We should read what the Taliban says before more die in Afghanistan on both sides.
– Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is a waste of our military resources and goes against what we tell the world we stand for.
– If you can’t tell a story extremely well, you can’t raise money for a start up.
– It takes a while for US Presidents to realize that the only real power they have is abroad.
– One country one vote is not a way to run the world. If you are a citizen of a large country you are underepresented.
– Managing online communities around a product is tough
– Apple’s software is amazing because it competes with Windows and Linux. Apple’s hardware is poor because it does not compete with anybody.
– The problem with tech after tax salaries in Italy is that social charges are so high that even if entrepreneurs spend more, coders get less.
– Choosing ice cream flavors you realize how different people are.
– Smartphones are like friends, one night I hang out with the Nokia, another with the iPhone, tonight is Android, but my real buddy is still the Blakcberry.
– Everyone I know believes in Twitter as a multibillion dollar business. I only believe in Twitter as a centimillion dollar business.
– Unemployment is sad but paradoxically good for the environment and for start ups.
– Obama’s mistake with health care is that he chose an issue that his young voters don’t care so much about and his opponents do.
– The best moments in life often can’t be shared on Twitter
– Being an entrepreneur in Spain is like being a snowboarder in Jamaica.
– The Clinton Global Initiative is not about making it. It’s about what to do once you have made it… or about giving it away intelligently.
– So many people have left Hotmail for Gmail that when I see a Hotmail email I know its obsolete.
– Overpromising may make sense if those who overpromise end up producing more than they would have if they hadn’t overpromised.
– Indeed, why is English a must for so many simple jobs but not for President?
– Computers changed photography from the portrayal of who we are to the portrayal of who we want to be.
– Once you lie your way to the Presidency, other lies come easy.
– Location services should realize in which direction you are moving and give you recommendations ahead of you!
– In Spain people think that calling a person negro or black is derogatory but calling him negrito or little black is not.
– For Ubuntu to be popular it must find an easier to install unlisted programs than terminal.
– USA is so good at promoting cross ethnic/cultural understanding at home, and so bad at doing it overseas.
– Death is the test of evolution. We are programmed to die. Even if we conquered all disease we would only increase life expectancy by 12 years.
– The origin of antisemitism may be lack of reciprocity: what Jews believe in Christians/Muslims also believe in, but not the other way around.
– Conservatives in Spain want to ban access to social networks without parents consent. Good economic policies come from social retards.
– USA has more road deaths than no speed limit Germany
– Kids have this unusual ability to teach us what they don’t have: patience.
– Europe is just the best continent to live in.
– The French are among the most productive people in the world. Tariq says it’s because they can’t wait to leave asap for the aperitive 🙂
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George Tziralis on June 30, 2010 ·
Great list, just created a listiki out of it to prioritize my favorite ones, care to contribute? http://listiki.com/best-martinvars-tweets 🙂
Yuri on July 1, 2010 ·
They should allow world cup teams to have foreign players.
Jens on July 1, 2010 ·
“Twitter should take pity on those who Tweet in German and give them a few extra characters”
That’s hilarious! But seriously, we really need those extra characters. 🙂
Good luck for Saturday’s match!
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Magdalena on June 30, 2010 ·
Awesome read. 🙂 Thank you!