Question of the Day: How are tweets like dust?
Insidious dust. It gets everywhere. Good thing we don’t live on Mars. Its dust storms can be planetwide and last weeks. “When you come in from playing with the Martian children, keep the dust out of the airlock, Johnny, or no ice cream for you and your little green friends.” Then there are the serious effects of dust here on Earth. Lung ailments, for example, like black lung disease caused by coal dust. Plus, that obligatory, though less deadly, chore of dusting, especially the coffee table dusting right before a visitor’s visit. Also, remember to replace both the car and furnace air filters before dust makes them an impenetrable wall. And, Holy Bovine, there’s even dust in outer space, vast clouds of it millions to billions of miles long, sometimes even trillions of miles long.
There’s another dust danger: Dust storms on Earth. You’ve seen the pictures, even if you haven’t personally experienced one in some arid or semiarid landscape. Maybe you’re thinking “temporary inconvenience for those hit by the storms,” but think “tragic dust storm.” In May, 2018, in northern India, dust storms killed almost 80 people in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.* The former is the home of the Taj Mahal, that “wonder” of the architectural world tourists flock to see. “Gee, in pictures it always seems like such a clean place, immaculate even, all that white, the reflecting pool, minarets against a blue sky. Who would think dust?”
There’s good reason to believe that the planetwide dust storms on Mars begin with isolated dust devils. Drive Interstate-80 through Nevada in the late summer if you want to see similar swirling soils and sands, or watch the dust fly when a wind hits a dry baseball infield. Dust devils are common here on Earth, but they usually don’t add up to become a regional unified phenomenon. On Mars, they do seem to accumulate into one massive dust storm relatively frequently.**
Now think Twitter. Think of that occasional tweet that, for whatever reason, begins to swirl through the minds of a few readers with a common point of view, a view that is antithetical to the tweet. Maybe like the recent Kanye West tweet that has swirled into a pretty big tweet-storm. We’re making ourselves into Mars; we’re becoming Martians. We can now turn what was formerly a little dust storm that interrupts a baseball game temporarily into a storm that sweeps through inner brains as tornadoes of anger and hurt. Dust devils that are truly devilish. Like the May Indian dust storms, devils that truly injure people.
For some, there seems to be no brain airlock to keep tweet-dust out. Want some protection from such insidious dust? Check your filter regularly.
* http://www.adaderana.lk/news/47245/77-killed-as-powerful-dust-storms-ravage-north-india
**https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrJzBxt.epa4SMA_dYPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMDgyYjJiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=Martian+dust+storms+develop+from+dust+devils&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01#id=2&vid=771031dc7f42076b7f807b9ea4b20abb&action=view
Insidious dust. It gets everywhere. Good thing we don’t live on Mars. Its dust storms can be planetwide and last weeks. “When you come in from playing with the Martian children, keep the dust out of the airlock, Johnny, or no ice cream for you and your little green friends.” Then there are the serious effects of dust here on Earth. Lung ailments, for example, like black lung disease caused by coal dust. Plus, that obligatory, though less deadly, chore of dusting, especially the coffee table dusting right before a visitor’s visit. Also, remember to replace both the car and furnace air filters before dust makes them an impenetrable wall. And, Holy Bovine, there’s even dust in outer space, vast clouds of it millions to billions of miles long, sometimes even trillions of miles long.
There’s another dust danger: Dust storms on Earth. You’ve seen the pictures, even if you haven’t personally experienced one in some arid or semiarid landscape. Maybe you’re thinking “temporary inconvenience for those hit by the storms,” but think “tragic dust storm.” In May, 2018, in northern India, dust storms killed almost 80 people in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.* The former is the home of the Taj Mahal, that “wonder” of the architectural world tourists flock to see. “Gee, in pictures it always seems like such a clean place, immaculate even, all that white, the reflecting pool, minarets against a blue sky. Who would think dust?”
There’s good reason to believe that the planetwide dust storms on Mars begin with isolated dust devils. Drive Interstate-80 through Nevada in the late summer if you want to see similar swirling soils and sands, or watch the dust fly when a wind hits a dry baseball infield. Dust devils are common here on Earth, but they usually don’t add up to become a regional unified phenomenon. On Mars, they do seem to accumulate into one massive dust storm relatively frequently.**
Now think Twitter. Think of that occasional tweet that, for whatever reason, begins to swirl through the minds of a few readers with a common point of view, a view that is antithetical to the tweet. Maybe like the recent Kanye West tweet that has swirled into a pretty big tweet-storm. We’re making ourselves into Mars; we’re becoming Martians. We can now turn what was formerly a little dust storm that interrupts a baseball game temporarily into a storm that sweeps through inner brains as tornadoes of anger and hurt. Dust devils that are truly devilish. Like the May Indian dust storms, devils that truly injure people.
For some, there seems to be no brain airlock to keep tweet-dust out. Want some protection from such insidious dust? Check your filter regularly.
* http://www.adaderana.lk/news/47245/77-killed-as-powerful-dust-storms-ravage-north-india
**https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrJzBxt.epa4SMA_dYPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMDgyYjJiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=Martian+dust+storms+develop+from+dust+devils&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01#id=2&vid=771031dc7f42076b7f807b9ea4b20abb&action=view
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