On April 23rd, 2013, the Associated Press Twitter account announced that two explosions had damaged the White House, injuring then-president Barack Obama. At that point, nobody knew how badly, but the reports were enough to cause panic.

In the end, of course, nobody would ever know what happened, because it hadn’t. (Except for the panic, but that was only a market panic.) At least, it hadn’t happened in this reality. But in a certain sense, an alternate and extra-human reality was created by this errant tweet… (Continue reading)