On this day, March 28 of the year 845, a huge Viking fleet attacked Paris. They were led by chieftain Ragnar (Reginherus in Frankish sources), who is traditionally identified as the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok. Ragnar's fleet, consisting of 120 Viking ships carrying thousands of men, reached Paris after having defeated the French army trying to stop them along the river Seine. After plundering and occupying Paris, the Vikings withdrew when they had been paid a huge ransom of 2570 kilograms (5665 lbs) of silver and gold from Charles the Bald, the French king. The attack is believed to be an act of revenge since Ragnar had been given land and the favor of the king 4 years earlier. The king had betrayed him and Ragnar had lost the land. What goes around comes around. #viking #whatgoesaroundcomesaround #grimfrost

A post shared by Grimfrost (@thegrimfrost) on Mar 28, 2018 at 3:58am PDT

via Dan

Adam and I welcome Mariah Parker, a PhD candidate in the Va. Commonwealth University chemistry department, to close out the Apt. 4 Cycle.

Way back in the early 2000’s I signed up for all of the new social media sites I could find. It was fun to see what kinds of different features they offered and I wanted to lock down my preferred username. Facebook, at the time, was limited to users with a .edu email address so I couldn’t get in. It always bugged me and so, when they opened it up to everyone, I passed. I was definitely the “no, I’m not on Facebook” guy.

I didn’t get on Facebook until December of 2012. My oldest daughter was going to turn 13 and I figured I would need to be able to answer questions and provide guidance on the biggest social network. For a while it was a good time. It was where all of the people were and I had fun trying to find long-forgotten people from my past.

My daughter, funny enough, wanted nothing to do with Facebook. It was for old people. Instagram and Twitter were all she cared about but I hung on to Facebook because I was having a good time. It was a one stop shop for all of my various hobbies and interests.

In 2015, as the machinations of US Presidential politics began, my Facebook good times turned bad. All of the bitching and complaining that dominated political discussions started to seep into other areas of my interest. There wasn’t anywhere on Facebook that was worth hanging out for me because it was all bad vibes everywhere. After the election, things didn’t improve and those bad vibes were working their way into me, personally.

For 2018 I decided to limit my Facebook time to the first day of every month. My plan was to pop in, see what I missed, offer many Thumbs Up, and then bounce until the following month. I made a brief exception for the day after my birthday so I could say thanks for all of the well-wishes.

And now all of this Cambridge Analytica bullshit is breaking. It’s like, I didn’t want to be on Facebook in the first place but now you’re telling me that all of my potential privacy concerns have become Worst Case Scenarios? Fuck that.

So I’ve disabled my account. Deactivated? Whatever the non-Delete word is, I’ve done that. I’m going to give it a couple of months to see if I cool off about it or see if they make substantial changes about their approach to my data.

Confluence! This Dan Cohen post talks about a microtrend that I’m happy to be a part of.

“…the salad days of “blog to reflect, tweet to connect” are gone. Long gone. Over the last year, especially, it has seemed much more like “blog to write, tweet to fight.” Moreover, the way that our writing and personal data has been used by social media companies has become more obviously problematic—not that it wasn’t problematic to begin with.

Which is why it’s once again a good time to blog, especially on one’s own domain.”

I’ve had a nice little posting run here lately and I’m a super-fan of having my own domain.

h/t kottke