So...is this award-winning teacher onto something?

So...is this award-winning teacher onto something?
https://www.moultrienews.com/opinion/teacher-to-parent---positive-reinforcement-doesn-t-work/article_cf5c0206-2522-11e7-98ed-b3a9b0e7d4f6.html?utm_medium=social

Just spent 5 minutes explaining this to an elderly relative.

Just spent 5 minutes explaining this to an elderly relative.

Originally shared by Cindy Brown

Oh that's clever. Take your time...


(from the New Yorker)

Codenames: Game of Thrones just isn't as much fun. ;-)

Originally shared by Happy Harpy Games

Codenames: Game of Thrones just isn't as much fun. ;-)

Something seems a bit...off.

Something seems a bit...off.

OK, even I'm concerned now that Google+ may actually be dying.

OK, even I'm concerned now that Google+ may actually be dying.
Look at this plot. It's my follower count. I usually don't care how many followers I have -- after all, it's not like I make any money off my social media posts -- but I do pay attention to it as a performance metric (for G+) of sorts. And what I see in this graph concerns me greatly.

Look at the period between the left edge of the chart and July 2016. You'll notice that it's ever-so-slightly bending upward. That shape is what mathematicians call "convex" and it means that my follower count is accelerating.

Accelerating numbers is what you expect to see in healthy social networks. The reason is because as the size of the network grows, it can attract even more people, thereby adding new users even faster than it used to. That should happen until (as Facebook has recently experienced) you start to run out of new users to add. It's safe to say that Google+ is in no danger of market saturation.

Now, compare that left half of the graph with the right half, between July 2016 and now. Over the past year, instead of curving up (convex), it's curving down...a "concave" shape. Concave is bad for social networks because it means that the rate of new users coming on-board is slowing down. That suggests that G+ users aren't attracting their friends as quickly as they used to. And THAT means users aren't committed to the platform, suggesting it's only a matter of time before the network ceases to grow entirely. And that would surely mean the end of G+ as we know it.

But then, maybe G+ as we knew it already ended a while ago. The shift from connecting people to other people (what social networks typically do) to connecting people to content (what Google wants G+ to do) happened in May, 2015, and we saw convex growth after that. But, the shift from a browser-centric G+ to an app-centric G+ peaked in mid-2016 (https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/everything-in-its-right-place.html), right around when the growth shifted from convex to concave. Is that the cause? I don't know. What I do know is that the dramatic life of G+ hasn't been one of unqualified support from Google leadership.

So what is Google going to do to recover its growth and attract new users? Or, perhaps more importantly, what is Google going to do to get old G+ users to come back? Maybe it's the same answer to both questions...maybe not. All I can say for sure is that G+ doesn't have much longer if these growth trends don't turn around pretty soon.

And yes, I realize I'm generalizing from just one person's profile. While my data could be dramatically different from G+ as a whole, I don't think it is. Sure, the scale is radically different, but the trend feels pretty much in-line with what I (and others) have been experiencing for a while. And I'm concerned. Are you?

This is ridiculous and amazing. But mostly ridiculous.

This is ridiculous and amazing. But mostly ridiculous.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/07/honey-hunters-bees-climbing-nepal/

Go vote...and comment.

Go vote...and comment.

#boardgames

Originally shared by Happy Harpy Games

Which of these themes for a new game would be most likely to attract your attention?