Tag: politics

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.)
    Tags: dns, censorship, libya
  • 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.
    Tags: food, chicken
  • 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.
    Tags: facebook, privacy
  • 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
    Tags: future
  • 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?
    Tags: politics, libertarianism, fire, subscription

Bookmarks for September 30, 2010

  • Murray 4 Mayor
    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.
    Tags: politics, toronto
  • Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet – UC Santa Cruz
    And yet we're still not funding space travel properly. What's up with that?
    Tags: science, space
  • 50 years of cyborgs: I have not the words. | Quinn Said
    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."
    Tags: future, writing, cyborg
  • The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism, By Jonathan Lethem (Harper's Magazine)
    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…
    Tags: writing, culture, copyright, essay, literature
  • Subtraction.com: The Only Thing a Router Is Good For
    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.
    Tags: design

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 September 6, 2010

  • Latest leaked draft of secret copyright treaty: US trying to cram DRM rules down the world's throats – Boing Boing
    This makes my blood boil. What kind of shitehawk can think that is is a fair or reasonable way to do business? The level of contempt that US business interests, and worse, politicians are showing for consumers around the world is staggering. Large chunks of the world are about to be shafted by people who they cannot hold accountable. US-resident chums, I would take it as a great kindness if you would write and call your representatives, on the issue of ACTA, and make their responses as public as possible.
    Tags: politics, copyright, acta
  • B.A.S.A.A.P. – Blog – BERG
    Mr Jones is at the clever again. Good metaphor for designing better human computer interaction.
    Tags: design, interface
  • Health Month
    I've just signed up to beta-test this, turning better habits into a game, although I just missed the deadline for the September game. So, for the month of October, I must: go to the gym twice a week. Do productive work (outside of the dayjob) on three days each week. Drink only one alcohlic drink per week. If do this, I will buy myself an ipod shuffle. If not, I'll donate price of the same to charity. (And if I find it helpful, I'll up the requirements in November.)
    Tags: gaming, health

Bookmarks for August 17, 2010

Bookmarks for August 10, 2010

  • CSI | Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures
    Some good stuff in here – a clear articulation of why the language of skepticism does not get through to the people it most needs to, and how we can do something about that.
    Tags: culture, science, religion, skepticism
  • Verizon-Google Legislative Framework Proposal
    One to write about later. Short version: I have used Google's mantra of "don't be evil" as a yardstick that I feel they often fail to live up to, mostly through lack of thought. This document, and the changes it proposes are not that. They are active "evil", a very sign of corporations laying the groundwork to maximise their own revenues at the expense of their customers. Whatever Google's founding principles may have been, they are just another corporation now, and worse, they're one who have decided to throw their very considerable weight behind practices that will make life less fair for the consumer. I really, really hope the FCC steps in to stop this – essentially what they doing is saying that "the public internet" should be neutral, and then not properly defining "the public internet" thereby leaving them free to define "the private internet" as anything they want.
    Tags: politics, google, netneutrality

Bookmarks for July 26, 2010

  • rotonic for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store
    Horrifyingly addictive little game – I downloaded it, and then when I looked up, it was hours later.
    Tags: iphone, games
  • Insufficient data – Charlie's Diary
    I'm actually more optimistic about what "Big Society" can potentially achieve than most people I know, but I recognise that actually, most of what it can achieve is (significant) optimisation of already-funded and already-managed programs that are set up with the correct social tools. Which is why I found this such interesting ready: Charlie Stross, in the course of wondering about how many people you'd need to send to Mars, ably demonstrates why society is already far too large and complex for "Big Society" to ever work past a certain limit.
    Tags: politics, technology, bigsociety, population

Thursday 1st January 1970

Bookmarks for June 14, 2010