In addition to Memorial Day, today also marks Quit Facebook Day.

Coincidentally, today’s GraphJam features a poke on Facebook.

According to the website, Over 32,000 people have committed to quitting Facebook today. Sure, that’s barely a scratch in Facebook’s 400+ million users, but it’s still a decent size to openly pack up and leave at once.

Do you know anyone quitting Facebook today?

Remember when Gmail was invite-only? I remember getting overly excited for J when he became the first person I knew in real life to get a Gmail invite (only a couple of days after the service launched!), and feeling a strange sense of accomplishment when he was finally able to invite others and gladly presented his then-girlfriend (ME!) with the first.

In the six years since Gmail first launched, it has become THE email provider of choice among my friends. I have long since deactivated my Hotmail, MSN, and Yahoo accounts, and when I first bought this domain two years ago I began using Google Apps (which uses a more secure and stable version of Gmail) to manage my @geekinheels.com email along with the few other Gmail accounts I own.

So according to the chart below, I’m pretty computer-literate, as I only use my own domain and Gmail.

Having used all the email providers in the chart, I can honestly say that Gmail is the most efficient, intuitive, and easy-to-use email service on the market. I would say that about 95% of the people I know (including my parents, who are practically computer-illiterate) use Gmail.

I do have a friend who still uses her @aol.com email as her primary email account, and whenever people ask for her email address she has to launch into an explanation into why she still chooses to use AOL.

Is your primary email NOT Gmail? Why do you prefer to use this email provider over Gmail?

[Chart via The Oatmeal.]

In my post about the 2010 World Cup Murals, reader Nina left a comment to correct my grammar:

It’s “I COULDN’T care less about soccer.” “I can care less” implies that you do in fact care about soccer and it would be possible for you reduce the amount you care. Make sense?

This was particularly interesting, because I really did think that “I could care less” is a form of sarcasm; hence, my grammar was correct (in my eyes).

Perhaps this mistake owes itself to my not being a native English speaker. But at the same time, this excuse holds no merit when you take into account the fact that I am currently much more comfortable with English than Korean.

However, I still have trouble recognizing common idioms and phrases because I spent the first 8 years of my life in another country, speaking another language. I have picked up a lot through Google and immersement into the (American) English language, but I confess that sometimes I do feel like an idiot when someone uses a not-so-literate piece of jargon and I have to nod and pretend I know what he/she said, or just try figure it out myself.

Hence, the “I could care less” issue. My friends are a sarcastic bunch. I myself am a sarcastic person (I didn’t earn the nickname “Daria” in high school for no reason). I just assumed that it was a sarcastic way of expressing your severe disinterest in a subject.

Are there non-native English speakers among my readers who face similar problems when it comes to deciphering idioms or common phrases, or distinguishing between sarcasm and proper grammar? Or is this confusion also shared by native English speakers?

I know there are tons of mock Facebook pages up for Star Wars characters, but this has to be the best Darth Vader one I’ve seen yet. Spanning across all six movies, even the level of detail in re-creating Facebook’s interface is amazing.

Head on over to the original at Everybody Sucks But Us for the full treat!

The Telegraph has a terrific article about the preservation and study of renowned artists’ paint palettes:

Why preserve Van Gogh’s palette?

Why preserve an artist’s palette? The daubs of raw pigment or the mixes left in position can be an intriguing index to the working method and the mind of the artist. And most, once the status of art had been elevated above the realms of mere craft, would paint themselves palette in hand.

Where and how colour is laid can convey emotion, psychology, religious significance. “The whole value of what you are about” wrote John Ruskin in his Elements of Drawing, first published in 1857 “depends on colour. If the colour is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how true your words are.”

The article goes on to describe and analyze the paint palettes of some of the greatest artists of the past couple of centuries, including Monet, Gaugin, and Van Gogh. It even includes pictures of some palettes, which I personally found excitingly fascinating.

My favorite of the pictured palettes is that of Seurat’s, pictured above. You can SEE his paintings through this palette, including some of the anal-retentiveness that must have gone into each pointillist painting.

I earnestly urge all artists and art connoisseurs to click on over to read the full article!

Via Neatorama.