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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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FastCompany-Jacob_0208In an illuminating study published in September in The Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Informatics, several linguists from Microsoft, Columbia University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology examined millions of North American tweets and tracked the spread of slang words like jawn, hella, and ctfuu (look 'em up). Using methods from epidemiology, they found that such coinages tore through populations like infectious diseases, with single and then multiple contacts occurring fast and furious in the close, unsanitary quarters of Twitter. Join a heap of snotty, fevered preschoolers—a useful analog for Twitter—and you're going to wake up with strep. It’s hella inevitable.
Read the rest of the article here: https://www.fastcompany.com/3066747/signs-and-symbols/one-nation-divided-by-a-common-language
