I really do enjoy watching Mr Stross think about the near future. I have no idea if he's right or not, but he's smart, shows his working, and never fails to make me think in turn. Which is all I can ask.

I love old maps. I especially love old maps of London.

"Cities are wonderful places, and everybody finds different things in them. Some of us like to take pictures of interesting, unusual, or beautiful things we see, but many of use are moving so fast through the urban landscape we don't take in the things around us.

Noticings is a game you play by going a bit slower, and having a look around you. It doesn't require you change your behaviour significantly, or interrupt your routine: you just take photographs of things that you think are interesting, or things you see. "

I intend to start playing at some point in the near future, when I have time to organise myself a little. Join me.

This one's done the rounds like a bastard over the last few days, but just in case you haven't seen it. Stuff on systems, American healthcare, and Project Cybersyn, all of which are worth learning about.

Alan Moore pays tribute to Robert Anton Wilson. The sound isn't perfect, but it's still, well, it's Alan Moore, talking about Robert Anton Wilson. It is therefore very good for you.

Nice article. Also worth noting that I'd never seen the accompanying photo before, the Olympic logo suddenly makes much more sense when it is seen pained on brick walls like graffiti. Really, *much* more sense. I really hope I'll start see it thrown up like tags all over London in the run-up to the games, because then it'll do it's job so much better…

It is exactly what it says on the tin. It even has a couple of five-star reviews. I really don't know what else to say.

Let us play a fun game, in the name of encouraging clear thinking, and making us all better and more functional human beings. The above website is a list of five basic errors of thinking that geeks often make in regard of social situations. So: go, read, then cam back and tell me: which of these do *you* suffer from, and what can you do about it? I for example, suffer from a bit of #2, which tends to manifest itself as a bloody minded tendency to be a bit "this is who I am, and if you don't like me then kindly fuck off". And what I do about it is to periodically remind myself that I am not actually perfect, whatever I might think, and that it is possible to like flawed people.

Or something like that, anyway. I've probably linked this before, but I don't care, it's worth linking again, if only for the Lovecraftian horror of "Aleph and Tentacles".

I know I get more done if I am permitted to multi-task. Not all those tasks are work, but I do a lot of my best thinking as a background process. Plus it should be screamingly obvious that happier, more relaxed and most o fall better informed people are just plain more useful in a wider variety of contexts.

Shit, I may have to investiagte getting a copy of this. I've managed to avoid potatoshop for a couple of years now, and just work in Lightroom, but this could be really useful.

Just go and look. A blog of total beauty. Keep scrolling down for more visual gems. Haven't seen anything this visually exciting in ages.

Absolutely fascinating thinking. Cognitively speaking, there are only two scarce resources – bandwidth and attention and the economies of a post-scarcity future (if we can get there without blowing ourselves up of fucking the environment beyond recovery) are going to have to be mediated by those factors, rather than traditional supply-and-demand, so I love to read thinking that brings them into play.