We are the Monkeys of Rum
Ben Werdmuller, Medium, 2016/05/03

This is a great story. I wonder how many people have stories like this - certainly most of the people I know and talk to and work with have their own internet origin stories. I did. I started by playing on a MUD, used this to learn internet programming, built an LMS, and the rest is history. What I like about Werdmuller's story is that it is on the one hand so typical and on the other hand so unique. And I remember the same sort of macro-phenomena he observes - the trolls, for example, that swarmed discussion boards in 2002 or so. It was a special moment in history, that wonderful few years when the web was created and people could use it for almost anything. 

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Toronto students create emoji to reflect themselves
Katrina Clarke, Toronto Star, 2016/05/03

There's a very involved emoji-approval process (which is how we end up with an unrepresentative set of emogis) but it'd good to see these students speaking out against it and creating their own alternatives. “I thought this would be a good way to spark them thinking about what emojis represent — if they represent them as young women,” said Daniel Pupulin, the students’ communication technology teacher.

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