Everything is terrible at present, and the brief Internet breaks I've gotten during the Brett Kimberlin/blogger trial have largely been spent watching reactions to and covering of the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri.

What the world needs now is a Twitter fight among Nassim Taleb (the pretentious author of The Black Swan), Prof Jeff Jarvis (the parody of new media evangelists staged by Rurik Bradbury), and the real Jeff Jarvis (the Web guru who proves how far you can get with lots of jargon and few results).

What if academics followed the new model of @nfergus and @nntaleb and got paid based on #controversy and #engagement?

— Prof. Jeff H Jarvis (@ProfJeffJarvis) August 12, 2014

@ProfJeffJarvis @nntaleb Re. Taleb - either you fail to appreciate the high-stakes epistemic issues or you don't care. Polemics justified.

— Lynn Layman (@lynnlayman) August 12, 2014

@lynnlayman @ProfJeffJarvis Thanks Lynn, "prof" Jarvis commits 3 fallacies, implies shouting truth => seeking controversy, not byproduct.

— Nassim N. Taleb ن (@nntaleb) August 12, 2014

.@lynnlayman @nntaleb But the question is monetization and trust. Who pays for epistemological analysis? A paywall?

— Prof. Jeff H Jarvis (@ProfJeffJarvis) August 12, 2014

@ProfJeffJarvis @lynnlayman Prof Jarvis, BS vendors like tend to think other people are also BS vendors. #rigor, #logic, #mathematics

— Nassim N. Taleb ن (@nntaleb) August 12, 2014

.@nntaleb @lynnlayman I would contend this is a post-BS world, in the sense that such distinctions no longer have traction. Only rhetoric

— Prof. Jeff H Jarvis (@ProfJeffJarvis) August 12, 2014

@ProfJeffJarvis @lynnlayman You're a fucking charlatan polluting intellectual life.

— Nassim N. Taleb ن (@nntaleb) August 12, 2014

.@nntaleb @lynnlayman There's nothing poisonous about pragmatism. Need to engage with the real world of Change 2.0, not a hypothetical one.

— Prof. Jeff H Jarvis (@ProfJeffJarvis) August 12, 2014

@nntaleb Sir, you are being trolled by an asshole with a fake account who thinks he's funny & is wrong--not by me.

— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) August 12, 2014

.@nntaleb @jeffjarvis Apologies for any confusion

— Prof. Jeff H Jarvis (@ProfJeffJarvis) August 12, 2014

@ProfJeffJarvis It's time you get your own fucking life. @nntaleb

— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) August 12, 2014