June 2012
Nutrition
Available data suggests that my supper last night after returning from the Book Club was a whole packet of Jaffa Cakes and nothing else.
Adieu Minitel →
blackbeardblog:
Minitel is really interesting, it’s like that lake in Russia which has its own arsenic-based ecosystem* - this Earth-2 version of the Internet in which vitally important decisions were taken differently i.e.
Mass connectivity across society in the early 80s, not early 90s
Provided free of charge by the Government
Headed off the “kills journalism” problem by, er, making content...
1 tag
But He Won't Do THAT →
Meat Loaf is the Liefeld to Springsteen’s Kirby. IN A GOOD WAY.
20 tags
It's The EDM Of The World As We Know It
It is time for me to get back in touch with The Kids, by listening to the UK Top 40 and putting it in order of how much I like it as I go. Best to worst.[[MORE]]
RUDIMENTAL ft JOHN NEWMAN - “Feel The Love” - Once upon a time my child there were dance tracks which did different things in one song and had surprises in / HAW HAW GRANDAD IS TELLING US OF THE OLD TIMES AGAIN. The bit where...
“Tonight I am taking part in a debate about the morality of hip-hop, billed as...”
– Tonight I am going to superimpose a misspelt phrase upon a picture of a cat. I bill this as the first of its kind.
(source)
How I Sued The Daily Mail And Won →
Anti-cuts protester smeared by press as violent rioter, sues, wins, writes about it. What to highlight, what to highlight? Let’s go for the conclusion:
Listening to their attempts at character assassination last week, I was struck by how these papers not only actually believe their own propaganda about the world we live in, but they believe no less trenchantly that ‘ordinary everyday...
The Bingo Event Horizon →
minimoonstar:
tomewing:
AKA Twlight of the Social Games. This is very good. If you care about “social” or “games” anyway.
A really good article. This one about video game writing, or “storysensing” versus storytelling, is I think even more revelatory:
Lacking the tools to create an arc, or a central hero to hang that arc from, the game story always ends up as something crude. It lacks...
The Bingo Event Horizon →
AKA Twlight of the Social Games. This is very good. If you care about “social” or “games” anyway.
“In the last couple of years this Cool Britannia mythos, which at least liked to...”
– The Quietus | Opinion | Black Sky Thinking | Martin Amis, Geezer-Prat, & His Unfortunate Clichés Of Britishness (via treblekicker)
Can’t stand Amis or Albarn but this piece is a curiously selective reading of the 90s and 00s. Leaves out Oasis, for instance, who thoroughly and completely...
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The Cycle Of Existence →
1. Seth Godin sees that people with big online fanbases tend to do well on Kickstarter.
2. Seth Godin does a Kickstarter for something or other.
3. Seth Godin tells people how exciting doing a Kickstarter is.
4. Press report on how brave Seth Godin is to do a Kickstarter.
5. Seth Godin Kickstarter does very well thanks to big online fanbase.
6. Visionary marketer Seth Godin has seen the...
Is time running out for Time Out? →
poohughstars:
tl;dr man moans about Time Out’s direction.
Enjoyable
This was a good read. Bleak too, though even when I lived in London I never bought or liked Time Out much.
England's Dreaming
littlejoeii said: Re: hype. There was a really late surge of hype before today’s game. A mix of ‘Italy are *so* average’ and ‘we won the group!’ made everyone forget how bad and uninventive *we* are/were. Watching football at Glastonbury is a strange experience.
Yes, I agree! This is what I meant by the hype bottoming out, I think - it bottomed out pre tournament and is now on the rise...
England Going Out Of Football Tournaments*
*Since I started paying attention
1990: vs West Germany, Semi-Final, penalties. At home, shocked at myself for being interested, then gripped after an adolescence of fierce indie kid footballphobia. Later discovered this was the most typical middle-class experience of the 90s of course!
1992: vs Sweden, group stage. No memory. Had to Wikipedia to find out England played in it. At home, suspect I...
“Just imagine the end of cyclones in Bangladesh, droughts in Ethiopia, sweltering...”
– People Magazine, from June 1991. (via twiststreet)
I too would like to raise the petulant finger of defiance to the solar organisation.
Stop It, Craft Beer →
2 tags
Anonymous asked: what does tomewing mean? also do you make $ with your blog using peepspayerDOTcom?
3 tags
Well, I got to age 39 before having a data-annihilating hard drive disaster, so I suppose I should count my blessings.
(work pc so I’ve only lost the last few days work, not any music personal effects etc) (& thank god I never clean out my sent mail)
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Blue Lines Revisited: minimoonstar: “Cheaters may... →
minimoonstar:
minimoonstar:
“Cheaters may almost never win but, given equal opportunity and a large enough competition, the winners are almost always cheaters.”
—
Reality Is Rigged - a game theory esque explanation of why meritocratic setups produce (over time) imperfect outcomes. (via tomewing)
You’re probably realizing this as I write, Tom, but strongly suspect it’s the other way around,...
minimoonstar:
“Cheaters may almost never win but, given equal opportunity and a large enough competition, the winners are almost always cheaters.”
—
Reality Is Rigged - a game theory esque explanation of why meritocratic setups produce (over time) imperfect outcomes. (via tomewing)
…It seems so simple once someone points it out. (Should I be more suspicious and try harder to break it?)
...
“Cheaters may almost never win but, given equal opportunity and a large enough...”
– Reality Is Rigged - a game theory esque explanation of why meritocratic setups produce (over time) imperfect outcomes.
“Any food that can be converted into paste form can be extruded and hence 3-D...”
– Behold - the burritobot (via @herdmeister on Twitter)
“His admission that Klout wasn’t semantically sophisticated enough to...”
– Klout Clouted At Le Web
TBH the picture in this post of Alexia Tsotsis giving Klout the side-eye sums it up nicely.
I think if/when paying for music starts feeling like giving to charity - and sells itself on those terms - then the game’s pretty much up.
Music Buying/NotBuying History
Not presented as representative, ethical, etc - just because I’ve been thinking about MP3s, piracy and so on today and thought I’d write my experiences down. I don’t know how typical they are. Under a cut so as not to bore the unwilling.[[MORE]]
1983-1986: Very occasionally bought 7” singles, never albums. Listened to my friend’s music at his house, he played...
I warned about it last week...
katherinestasaph:
parklakespeakers:
…and in the continued absence of a release for Maroon 5’s “Payphone”, which people are apparently desperate to buy for some reason, it’s even worse than I thought. Precision Tunes’ version of the song is #9 in the UK charts this week. #9!
Something really needs to be done to fix this before we get our first number one from an opportunist cover (that never...
A Naive Question
Is there any app that turns an iphone into a useful tool for recording face-to-face interviews?
wheelr.tumblr: Dear Sir, Regarding Your Affection... →
wheelr:
For all the chaps who are so upset, furious, offended, affronted that people mocked the Catwoman #0 cover, I have a few words of counsel.
First, please understand that the critics are not complaining that the cover is “too sexy”. Perhaps someone somewhere has said that the cover is “too…
“Nobody who is eating at Burger King is trying to be on trend, unless they are...”
– This post tempts me to copyright infringement. It is just SO CORRECT and I want to quote it all. (via katherinestasaph)
I totally agree w/the main points about idiotic foodie assumptions, how people relate to food etc but! BK actually HAS got a history of “hipster”-pandering ads,...
“I don’t like the idea of “understanding” a film. I don’t believe that rational...”
– Federico Fellini
Same goes for poetry!
(via whiskey—robot)
this this this!
(via electrichoney)
This quote reminds me of Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation,” and like that essay, I both agree and disagree. I don’t believe that appreciation, in its purest form, requires “understanding.” But...
He Needs To Talk About Kevin →
Dexys review at Pitchfork. Fans who just look at the mark might be quite annoyed. Fans who actually read the piece might ALSO be quite annoyed, but with better reason.
The short version is that this is a great, sustained, intelligent performance in service of pretty ordinary “man admits he’s a dick” sentiments - but if you like man-admits-he’s-a-dick art (or are very...
"Trolls"
The word “troll” - in an internet context - was never specific. Everyone thought they knew one when they saw one, but nobody exactly agreed what it meant and certainly not who they were. In fact that was part of the point of trolling - there was a particular sweet spot of effectiveness where one part of a community (the moderators, maybe) had you pegged as a troll, and another thought...
