- Help: Twelve Tales of Healing
Your second stock-filler recommendation for the day! What are you waiting for? Go! Get shopping! Buy my friend's fine literary product and help make the world a better place!
- Invaders from Mars – Charlie's Diary
I know Stross is one of my regular linkees, and I'm sure a lot of you glide over him at this point, but I thought this was a particularly interesting read, and I commend it to anyone who is feeling frustrated by the apparently lack of ability for members of the public to influence anything in the wake of stuff like Wikileaks and the student fees protests. It won't tell you how to change things, but it provides an interesting perspective on the whys of the current situation, that lead to some interesting thoughts on how one might affect change in the medium-term future.
- The Fast Fiction Challenge – Volume 2 by Lee Barnett
Budgie's Fast Fiction Challenge, now in its second volume. I commend it to your attention as a perfect stocking filler.
- standpoint gallery
Reverting to Type: exhibition. Must go see.
- Havasu: a material exploration of conversational interfaces – Blog – BERG
Interested mostly into the insights into conversational interface, rather than the actual product here. For consideration: pair a more general use version of this with some voice recognition software, and it won't be long before all those SF voice-activated computers become a reality.
Tag: politics
Bookmarks for December 2, 2010
- I, Reader by Alexander Chee – The Morning News
This is a really really good personal summary of an obsessive book collector's relationship with his new e-readers. If you're a bibliophile who is wondering if there's a place for e-readers in your life, I suggest you read this.
- How Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks | TPMMuckraker
This is idiotic rubbish on the part of Lieberman, and worse, Amazon. It isn't at all clear that Wikileaks has done anything illegal, and presuming they have just because powerful people don't like it is exactly the wrong response, and sends all sorts of hideous messages about society.
- After secrets: Missing the point of WikiLeaks | The Economist
And of course, as this makes clear, Lieberman and Amazon are very much missing the point. This is not a problem that can be fixed by attacking Wikileaks, or any similar service.
Bookmarks for November 23, 2010
- boilerpipe
Web API for extracting clutter from web pages and just returning the content. Nice!
- New House Climate Czar | Talking Points Memo
Americans! Have you ever wondered why everyone hates you? It's because you elect people like this, and then apparently give them a chance of being in hugely influential of policy areas where they can fuck up the planet for people who didn't get a say in electing them, on the basis of some bullshit religious beliefs, that, in a civilised country, would disqualify them as a candidate for dog catcher. Seriously, America, please get on with reforming your political system and society to get rid of people like this. By force, if necessary.
Bookmarks for November 18, 2010
- John Allison's UK Indie Comics Manifesto
Good, harsh, honest, smart. Worth reading.
- BBC vows action if ISPs throttle iPlayer
The BBC are squaring up to fight ISPs who indulge in traffic shaping/two-tier internet type behaviour that affects them, by making it clear when ISPs do so, and refusing to pay for faster deliverry. Which is good news, I guess. Here's hoping other big internet firms do the same.
- BBC News – Minister Ed Vaizey backs 'two-speed' internet
I'm getting kind of tired to linking to idiocy perpetrated by our governement. I can only assume that Ed Vaizey is either evil or a moron, because it is simple not reasonable that I should pay my ISP for a service, and them for them to tell me that I cannot have the level of service I want because *a third party* has not also paid them. *I* am paying for the fucking service. And while I appreciate that the counter argument is "well, then go elsewhere for your service", but what happens if there *is* no elsewhere to go, or when I'm locked in by a fixed term contract, the terms of which my ISP can vary, but I can't. Argle argle rant!
Bookmarks for October 29, 2010
- No terror arrests in 100,000 police counter-terror searches, figures show | Law | guardian.co.uk
I think the most surprising thing about this story is this quote: "A policy which fuels resentment and antagonism amongst minority communities without achieving a single terrorist conviction serves only to help our enemies and increase the terrorism threat." And the reason it's surprising it that it's coming from a Conservative MP. (Although I it is David Davis, who I confess to a grudging admiration for on the subject of civil liberties.)
- Del's plain english guide
Yes. More of this sort of thing, please.
- WGGB – News – PLR agency written off
Here's one of the governments cuts that won't make headline news, that won't get any of the usual arts bodies fighting against it, because it's not music or theatre or public art or any of the other stuff luvvies and lefties get up in arms about. And honestly, it probably won't change most' people's lives, but realistically also won't save any serious money. It's a cut for the sake of making a cut, an idealogical statement. And that statement is, broadly "fuck writers".
- budgie's squawks – The Fast Fiction Challenge 2010: The final list
Budgie has managed to write 150 ultra-short stories in 150 days. If you think that consistently writing 200 words a day isn't a remarkable feat, then I suggest that you try it. Every day, for almost half a year, you sit down in front of a blank piece of paper, and force yourself to have a good idea. No excuse for illness, no excuses for just "being busy with other things". 150 days, having a new idea every day, and executing that idea to a high standard, without fail. Yeah. My hat's off to you, squire. 200 days next year, year?
Bookmarks for October 28, 2010
- HTTPS Everywhere | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Here's a plugin you can install and use that will protect you from Firesheep on a lot of sites that support it. Not all, by any means, so don't go assuming you're secure, just because you're running it, but it should keep you safe on many popular sites.
- Exposing Nadine Dorries and the little gang of Conservatives who cried ‘stalker’ | Bloggerheads
3 Conservative MPs, one of the them a cabinet member, have repeatedly smeared and harassed a journalist who had the temerity to question some of the lies they told in public. (I should perhaps say that I don't believe that Labour MPs are automatically above this kind of behaviour, either, merely that I haven't read anything about it lately. That doesn't make it acceptable that the Conservatives do it.)
- Subtraction.com: My iPad Magazine Stand
Some good, thoughtful writing on the current crop of magazines-for-ipad, and the failings in the software used to produce and consume them.
Bookmarks for October 21, 2010
- The Right To The City
"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.”
- China Mieville: Letter to a Progressive Liberal Democract
I wish I had his way with words.
- apiphile: If it helps, try to imagine I am less of an annoying git and more of a conduit for wisdom
Del, on writing with clarity and purpose. I would like to forcefeed this to oh, really, everyone. Including myself.
Bookmarks for October 20, 2010
- First they came for the quangos…
I imagine this one will be doing the rounds today.
- Kupenga Kwa Hamlet at Oval House Theatre 16th November to 4th December
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?
- Osborne will escape public wrath if Labour lets him win the blame game | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian
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.)
- london futures | images that bring ideas to life and frame the climate change debate in a way that everyone can understand
Will have to try and get to the Museum of London to see this.
Bookmarks for October 15, 2010
- BBC News – Spending Review: Universities 'to face £4.2bn cut'
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.
Bookmarks for October 6, 2010
- The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe | :Ben Metcalfe Blog
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.)
- Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It’s…
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.
- Is your private phone number on Facebook? Probably. And so are your friends' | Technology | guardian.co.uk
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.
- russell davies: something something something
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
- Think Progress » Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down
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?