February 2012
6 posts
“The ease of producing, distributing, and messing around with text has resulted...”
– Marco Arment
The Web Without the Muck: A Long Interview with... →
The $4.99 app is simple, elegant, and attractive—all prerequisites, if you’re promising readers a more serene reading experience. What sets it apart from the other reading apps is the way it fetches a supply of long-form articles from the chosen publications, so users don’t have to. With apps like Instapaper, by contrast, you do the curating yourself: if you find an article on the Web that you...
Arrests leave Sun journalists feeling cast off by... →
Wapping journalists are in a state of shock. Many now believe that their ultimate boss, Rupert Murdoch, no longer cares for them. Staff at the Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times were taken aback when news broke at the weekend of four senior Sun journalists being arrested.
An angry and bewildered veteran of that newspaper explained that it wasn’t so much the arrests themselves that...
Spiders dodge cannibalism through remote... →
In other animal-related news, male orb-spiders break off their own genitals while inside females, which keeps pumping semen into her, to increase the odds of fertilisation in case the female, which has a penchant for cannibalism, decides to eat him. (This strategy is probably not recommended for humans.)
January 2012
38 posts
1 tag
WatchRoss squeals like a pig when he wants to go for a walk.
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“I don’t read anyone consistently aside from Gruber. I see and read so much...”
– Kottke making my head completely fucking explode. How can a person say this? Is it a joke? (via Langer)
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“No excuses for phone hacking. No argument. No excuses either for copyright...”
– Rupert Murdoch on Twitter has to be a fucking liability for somebody
Something's Got to Give →
Almost 15 years have passed since the infamous Patco strike, which ended with President Reagan firing 11,400 of the nation’s 17,000 controllers, but the F.A.A.’s system for moving airplanes safely across the skies has never been closer to chaos. Many of the nation’s airport control towers and radar rooms still have fewer fully trained controllers than before the strike, yet...
I was doing some research for a Syllabi post and stumbled across this awesome three-part debunking of the myth that you can manafacture a poison called Ricin in your home. This myth has been circulating since the days of BBSs when a teenager with no biochemical knowledge uploaded it to an anarchist BBS, replete with spelling errors, and it’s been edited and distributed and referred to in the...
Katy Perry Unfollows Russell Brand on Twitter →
Watch out, guys, we’ve got some journalism happening here.
1 tag
The End of the Echo Chamber →
Today, Facebook is publishing a study that disproves some hoary conventional wisdom about the Web. According to this new research, the online echo chamber doesn’t exist.
Facebook did a non-peer-reviewed study on its own network, that hinged heavily on its secret EdgeRank algorithm and — surprise — got results that are very good PR for Facebook. This is awfully familiar!...
Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Facebook or Google... →
fek:
And Tumblr! Sorry, Tumblr. But it’s true.
“I MADE U A MEME BUT SOPA EATED IT”
– (via mongs)
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Protesters's stories: Jonnie Marbles and Rupert... →
The Guardian interviewed the guy that pied Murdoch last year. He got four weeks in jail for it. (Also kind of curious about what copy editor is responsible for the mistake in the headline.)
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Gentlemen, I have started a blog. Famous last words, to be sure, but I’ve been thinking about and planning and working on this for a while, and I like what it’s ended up looking like. I will tell you all about it, but first some boring meandering in pursuit of a point.
Apparently, there’s a longform renaissance under way and, while I’m proud to be part of it to some...
“Having asked, in a completely innocent way, whether the Times should behave like...”
– Clay Shirky on NYT public editor Arthur Brisbane’s probably soon-to-be-infamous Truth Vigilante post.
How To Insert a "Read More" Break on Tumblr
Check out the help and theme doc pages, oh wait, it’s not documented anywhere
Try <!--more-->
Try <!--More-->
Try <!-- More -->
Get tired of trying random combinations and Google the Staff post it was mentioned in once
Realise it only works in text posts and you’re wasting your fucking time
Easy!
thesyllabi:
The Independent is reporting that Chinese scientists have yet again shown that internet dependency alters the brain, but are things like internet and video game addiction real? Vaughan Bell says probably not; it’s the result of “a perfect storm of pop medicine, pseudo-neuroscience, and misplaced sympathy.” The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Statstical Manual of...
LSSU’s annual list of words that ought to be banished. WSU’s list of words that ought to make a comeback.
thesyllabi:
How Many Stephen Colberts Are There? “Lately, there has emerged a third Colbert. This one is a version of the TV-show Colbert, except he doesn’t exist just on screen anymore. He exists in the real world and has begun to meddle in it.”
Got round to reading this last night. Great read. (Also, this is reblogged from a new thing I’m doing, more on that next week.)
2 tags
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How crossword puzzles mess with your mind →
The processes leading to that flash of insight can illuminate many of the human mind’s curious characteristics. Crosswords can reflect the nature of intuition, hint at the way we retrieve words from our memory, and reveal a surprising connection between puzzle solving and our ability to recognise a human face.
December 2011
38 posts
Oops
Me: I think this is the first year I've had someone to kiss at midnight
H: ...
Me: What?
H: You forgetful jackass!
Me: What!
H: I met you on New Year's Eve you fucking asshole!
