Tag: food

Bookmarks for September 22, 2010

Bookmarks for September 21, 2010

  • Politics of storytelling – Laurie Penny interviews China Mieville
    This is food for thought. Key quote: "Storytelling is clearly an extremely important function of societies, but it's nonetheless unproven that to be human is to be a storytelling being. Even if it is the case that human beings are completely intrinsically storytelling animals, it doesn't follow that that's something to celebrate, any more than we should celebrate the fact that human beings are defecating animals."

    There're a number of obvious counter-arguments, that can essentially be lumped in as "the power of art to bring about change" but it's still a point of view worth remembering.

    Tags: politics, fiction, revolution
  • I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right) | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
    I think I'm going to have to pick this book up. A lot of the numbers around the environmental impact of livestock farming have seemed off to me particularly in relation to arguments about grain (because, well, what's wrong with grass-fed?) and water (because invariably, the numbers seem to assume that any water fed to a cow never leaves the cow, which is pretty self-evidently wrong). It's nice to see that someone's actually taken the numbers apart and proved them wrong/fallacious, and done so in a way that convinces even a big hippy like Monbiot.
    Tags: food, science, environment, sustainability, meat
  • Alex Payne — The Very Last Thing I'll Write About Twitter
    A clear and sensible statement about the need to decentralise services like Twitter, Facebook, and really, almost any service, if you want it around for the long (decade+) haul. Idle thought: Someday, someone will figure out how to massively decentralise search, and than things will get really interesting. (Google have, of course, effectively done this internally in that their search architecture is spread over cluster after cluster, but that's not the same as true decentralisation…)
    Tags: business, twitter, analysis, social
  • Diaspora Developer Release
    I really want this to succeed – once it's out of beta, and at the more-or-less easy to install stage, I'll probably put some time and cash, into setting up a Seed. I absolutely know that there are people I've lost touch with since leaving Facebook, and I know my social life has suffered for it. I've felt quite disconnected from many of my friends this year, and it's bugging me quite a lot of late. I'm not blaming anyone, you understand and I'm not going to be one of those arseholes who think that it's everyone else's fault – I knew what I was doing when I walked away from Farcebook – I'm just a little sad that people don't seem to use any other contact medium any more. So as soon as I can, I'll help offer a better alternative…
    Tags: opensource, facebook, social, diaspora

Bookmarks for August 27, 2010

Bookmarks for June 1, 2010

Bookmarks for February 17, 2010

  • Music Journalism is the New Piracy | Electronic Frontier Foundation
    The IFPI have sent a bunch of copyright infringement notices, and Google have killed a bunch of music blogs. Here's the thing: at least some of the blogs that have been taken down are not infringing. Even absent arguments like fair use, they actually had permission to post the MP3s. I particularly like Cory Doctorow's comment on this one: "IFPI will argue that it was just trying to help artists, that everyone makes mistakes, that copyright is complicated. But these are exactly the same arguments that the musicbloggers whose sites were vanished by IFPI's abusive lawyering would have made, if they'd been given a chance." We desperately need to stop the culture that an infringement notice constitutes legal proof that infringement is taking place – we need ISPs and bodies like Google to grow a spine and stop being evil. And if you think this is edge case stuff, I should point out that something like this happened to a friend of mine in the last month. It'll happen to you, too, just wait.
    Tags: journalism, music, copyright, mp3
  • What Grant Achatz Saw at El Bulli – Diner's Journal Blog – NYTimes.com
    Alinea and The French Laundry are both only a step behind El Bulli as places I really want to go and eat, and it's lovely to see Achatz paying tribute to Adria.
    Tags: food, cooking

Bookmarks for January 29, 2010

  • Adria: elBulli Restaurant to Close for Two Years – TIME
    Bugger. Eating at ElBulli was pretty much the top spot on the "things to do before I die" list, and yeah, he's going to re-open, but it's still an experience I'm unlikely to ever get to have, in it's current form. I shall revise it to "Eat Ferran Adria's food", but it's still saddening.
    Tags: creativity, food, cooking
  • stevenf.com – I need to talk to you about computers.
    Excellent article on the place for an iPad in the history of computing, and the generation shift that is occurring. For myself, I am having to keep reminding myself that I don't need one as a priority, that version 2.0 will be much better, and so on and so forth. I really do want a decent ebook/magazine reader…
    Tags: apple, technology, ipad
  • xkcd: Spirit
    I found today's XKCD near-heartbreaking on a number of levels. Why aren't we trying to get it home, for fuck's sake? I know it's not alive, but it's out there, and we're not even trying to go after it…
    Tags: comics, space, nasa

Bookmarks for September 21, 2009

Bookmarks for April 23, 2009