Alasdair Watson

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.

This could get slightly interesting if they ever come for bit.ly – engendering the single most massive dose of instant linkrot the intertubes have ever seen. (This is, of course, why URL shorteners are evil, and why anyone who uses them outside of twitter is a fuckwit). It's strongly suggest that if you need to post a shortened link anywhere, you use is.gd or goo.gl or another similar service. (Incidentally, in case anyone's wondering, it's stuff like this that made me use black-ink.org and not sda.ir as my primary domain when I consolidated everything.)

Horrifying. I knew about this, but I didn't *know* about this. From now on, I'm only eating chicken where I can name the specific part of the chicken it came from.

I know I sound like a broken record when I link this stuff. Tough. I can't decide if Facebook are stupid, or actively malevolent, but here's the bottom line: a service I quit using, because I didn't trust them with my person data, as a result of a number of breaches of privacy and security, has my phone number, something I regard as one of my most personal items of data, despite my best efforts. It's not something I give out to just anyone. Yet, tt's an accepted social norm to meet people at parties, and become friends on Facebook, and that's fine. But just because I'm someone's friend on Facebook does not mean I want them to have my number. A practical example: I do have a work account on there. It has two friends. I have neither of their phone numbers. Or rather, I *had* neither of their phone numbers. Now I've got them both. Neither of them has uploaded their number to Facebook. (I checked.) Read this article, then write to Facebook.

Lot of interesting stuff about the lack of future (for lack of a better term) that's around at the moment. Playing join the dots with Mr Stross' idea that we might be suffering from massive future shock as a culture, it's not hard to see why we might be lacking a bit

There's so much going on here, it's just not funny. Mob jokes, political commentary against a conservative/libertarian point of view. But here's the thing: it's just not funny. A family's home burned down, and people with the equipment to help them stood and watched the flames. In what world is selfishness on that scale not a crime punishable by imprisonment?

Fascinating reading – the former CEO of Websabe, about why his site was beaten (and eventually, closed down) by his major competitor. Very honest, and quite a clear eyed look at his own mistakes. (I note in passing that I am still (eagerly) waiting for the UK version of Mint or Websabe.)

I would love for our client to allow us to make some of the data generated by their various systems open. I've no idea what the result would be, possibly nothing, but I'd be interested to see, especially as I've been thinking about the vast aggregate of similar data we've got across several clients…

A feminist pop-culture adventure, written by a number of people of this parish. I've read some of what's to come on this site, and if you care at all about one or both of equality or pop culture you will want to read this.

Because Toronto deserves something nice. There are a number of Torontonians around these parts. I urge you all to vote Murray, in the strongest, tenderest possible terms.

And yet we're still not funding space travel properly. What's up with that?

This ones doing the rounds, and with excellent reason. A bit of writing on posthumanity that encompasses all the usual stuff and cyborgs and tool using and modern infrastructure, and goes to some fascinating and non-generally considered places beyond that. For example: "a cyborg revolution was happening the same year Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline coined the term. A hostile environment was being tamed by a newly and artificially capable people. It escaped notice and critique though, because the modified weren’t men, and then environment wasn’t space. The modified were women, and the environment was men. The women of the 60s were the first to modify and control their uteruses."

An absolutely superb essay on influence, creativity, and copyright. The absolute best writing I have read on this subject, anywhere. And with a truly superb sting in the tail…

This is one of those "so simple it's obvious" things, that clearly, no-one has ever thought of. I have one (semi-)regular physical interaction with my internet router, and I bet it's the same one you do. I turn it off and on again. That's the only thing I ever do with it. And yet, the switch to do that is hidden at the back, and there is absolutely no reason why this should be so. No reason at all.