Christiaan Van Vurren is the greatest contribution Australia’s made to the social media scene.

Fighting tuberculosis, his excessive time locked in quarantine has given him plenty of time to produce a bunch of hilarious YouTube videos via his alter ego the ‘Fully Sick Rapper‘.

Enjoy:

And to make a serious point, I actually think this is a great (if extreme) example of Clay Shirky’s thesis on ‘social surplus’. Essentially, the rise of social tools and self-publishing allows humanity to use their ‘social surplus’ to create and add value, as opposed to dumbly sitting in front of a television screen.

Much the same as peasants would drink themselves into a gin stupor during the industrial revolution, and also how in the past a bloke in quarantine would have to spend his days reading, watching DVDs and masticating (you’ve gotta watch the vid above to get that joke), instead of producing media that is generating hundreds of thousands of views and global attention.

Hello America,

I’d like to introduce you to a brilliant word to use in all those situations that you’re talking about something that will happen in two weeks time:

Fortnight.

Wikipedia:

The fortnight is a unit of time equivalent to fourteen days. The word derives from the Old English feorwertyne niht, meaning “fourteen nights”.

Fortnight is a commonly used word in Britain and many Commonwealth countries such as Pakistan, India, New Zealand and Australia (where many wages, salaries and most social security benefits are paid on a fortnightly basis.) The word is rarely used in the United States, but is used regionally in Canada. Payroll systems may use the term biweekly in reference to pay periods every two weeks. The terms fortnightly and biweekly are often mistakenly conflated with semimonthly.

In a sentence:

“Once a fortnight, I wish Americans used a word that would refer to a period of time lasting precisely fourteen days”.

I shared this thought on Twitter today:

And drew this response:

So how about it Yanks? Accept Fortnight into your life?

How I love Aussie meat-pie shop Tuckshop NYC.