Alasdair Watson

Mostly bookmarking this for myself, although I imagine a few people here might be mildly diverted by it.

"The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire.”

I wish I had his way with words.

Del, on writing with clarity and purpose. I would like to forcefeed this to oh, really, everyone. Including myself.

I imagine this one will be doing the rounds today.

I am told that this is "An exhilarating re-telling of the classic story of betrayal and vengeance, told by two outstanding, award-winning Zimbabwean performers using music, dance and a fusion of traditional African storytelling with contemporary Township Theatre practice. Fast, powerful, moving and unlike any other Shakespeare you have ever seen." I'm planning on going. Anyone else?

Good piece on the importance of the blame game in today's cuts. Remember: it is not Labour who is responsible for these cuts. If you are disposed to blame someone other than the current government, I suggest you blame the bankers. And if you are disposed to suggest that they should have been more heavily regulated, then, well, I agree with you. And I suggest you ask yourself how the Conservative party of the time argued they should have been regulated. (Hint: it was not more heavily.)

Will have to try and get to the Museum of London to see this.

Mr Cascio being clever, as per. Wouldn't mind seeing the whole documentary if the opportunity were to arise, but these bits from Jamais are worth the price of admission on their own.

If and when I get round to buying an stylus for the ipad, I could see this getting a lot of use, mostly at work. (I've tried handwriting without a pen, just using a fingertip, but it's a but rubbish.)

By this point, there really isn't a lot of point in saying anything. I'm just y'know, sighing and rolling my eyes.

By way of some slight recompense for the discussions of the last few days, I offer this commentary by much better writer than I.

This *has* be delibarately leaking of a massively inflated figure, so as to make the real figure seem much more palatable when it eventually comes out. It just has to. The alternative is simply unthinkable.

Possibly the single biggest and most interesting time-suck I've seen on the internet to date. I've run across a lot of these things before, individually, and the ones I know are very awesome, which makes me think the rest of them will be too. One to sit down with when you've got time to spare, and want to be blow away by the artistic cleverness of others.

I adore OKTrends (OKCupid's stats analysis blog) out all measure. Especially when they prove bigots wrong with y'know, actual facts.

Photography heatmaps for various cities – things tourist take photos of compared to locals. Fascinating stuff.

Ooh, now this is very interesting indeed. I could probably assemble 10,000 words on any one specific subject quite easily. They might even be entertaining enough to be worth buying.

Del has made her frankly excellent book, Pass The Parcel, available for purchase, for which you should all be very grateful. Del is a writer of no small talent, and deserves your cash, so you should fork it over at your earliest convenience. In exchange, you're going to get a novel containing Weird London and collection of freaks, losers and bastards with will have you clamouring for more. Go.

Add some reputation metrics on top of this "accept edits by X" "only allow people with a rating of X or more to edit" that sort fo thing, and some anti-idiot tools "remove all edits by X", and er, yeah. The grunt work part of professional copy editing is going to go the way of the dodo. (The curatorial and advisory role, on the other hand, becomes more and more important…)

C.J. Lines "Filth Kiss" was one of the more gleefully horrible (and genuinely disturbing) works of horror fiction I read the other year. He has made his short story "The Trending" available in a number of electronic formats, for absolutely nothing. It's a lovely little take on the classic Monkey's Paw stories, brought into the 21st century.