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blech + comment   272

The New Aestetic and Future Fatigue | izabael.com
Klint Finley: "I like Bridle’s stuff, but it’s hard for me to feel like it’s a truly new aesthetic. The fashion bits look like electro revival scene style from the 00s that continue to be popular today, which is itself a revival of 80s electro, hip-hop and synthpop. And 8-bit already got a revival in the 90s and 00s, and of course that was all 80s nostalgia. Glitch still felt vital in the early 00s, but it’s by now passe."
newaesthetic  comment  retro  pixelart  from instapaper
7 weeks ago by blech
Space and Architecture in Battlestar Galactica | Mediascape
Annie Dell’Aria: "The architecture and design of the new Battlestar Galactica’s (SciFi, 2004-2009) narrative world mirrors the complex political, ethical, and moral questions posed by the narrative arc of the entire series."
battlestargalactica  tv  television  culture  architecture  comment  from instapaper
7 weeks ago by blech
Roads privatisation: are we going round in circles? | guardian.co.uk
Joe Moran: "I think we've been here before, skirting the issue of road pricing and using the notion we are 'falling behind' to push privatisation." A longer view.
uk  roads  privatisation  politics  traffic  planning  guardian  comment  from instapaper
9 weeks ago by blech
Reacting to The New Aesthetic; Trains, Spiderwebs and Ship Minds | smithery
"It has something to do with what James says in his post - “[The New Aesthetic] has made me see and think about the world in a strange way“. I relate a lot to that, but in particular, I now find myself being drawn to the reactions of people to things that (may or may not be) The New Aesthetic, but are certainly the presence of non-human actors in the world."
newaesthetic  humans  robots  nonhumanactors  sxsw  comment  from instapaper
10 weeks ago by blech
China Miéville on Apocalyptic London | NYTimes.com
One of my favourite - and most London - authors for, of all publications, the New York Times, with a scathing look at the city in the age of Tory-driven austerity. Well worth a read.
nytimes  london  chinamiéville  essay  comment  from instapaper
12 weeks ago by blech
The Death of the Cyberflâneur | NYTimes.com
"Transcending its original playful identity, it’s no longer a place for strolling — it’s a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone “surfs” the Web anymore." A thoughtful essay by Evgeny Morozov that captures some of my dislike for the modern web. (Having said that, on editing my pinboard bookmarks, I find a disturbing number recently are from the NYT. So much for me flaneuring.)
nytimes  web  culture  flâneur  paris  history  internet  facebook  comment  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
Are You Bipolar? | NY Magazine
"Mild bipolar disorder may be to this decade what depression was to the nineties, thanks to a new drug and an expanding definition. But when do ordinary peaks and valleys become pathological?"
disease  illness  diagnosis  comment  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
A Healthy Information Diet: The Case for Conscious Consumption | The Atlantic
Maria Popova: "Affirmation sells a lot better than information. Who wants to hear the truth when they can hear that they're right?" http://t.co/eD3ZOwQx
internet  information  news  reading  comment  from instapaper
january 2012 by blech
2012: The Dust Blows Forward | Digital Photography Review
"There will be light, and then there will be nothing. But how will the camera market fare? Read on, as I ponder out loud." Ashley Pomeroy on photography.
photography  cameras  technology  comment  ashleypomeroy  from instapaper
january 2012 by blech
Grief | The BI Blog
"One topic. Two points of view." On the Shuttle, and something more personal.
grief  comment  shuttle  x37b  fredscharmen  mollywrightsteenson 
january 2012 by blech
The New Twitter (R.I.P. Tweetie) | Daring Fireball
"The Twitter service I signed up for is one where people tweet 140-character posts, you follow those people whose tweets you tend to enjoy, and that’s it. The Twitter service this new UI presents is about a whole lot more — mass-market spoonfed “trending topics” and sponsored content. It’s trying to make Twitter work for people who don’t see the appeal of what Twitter was supposed to be."
daringfireball  twitter  flytwitter  newnewtwitter  service  comment  api 
december 2011 by blech
A Point of View: The euro's strange stories | BBC News
"With the euro in turmoil, writer and academic Mary Beard explores the odd tales from myth and history told on the currency's coins." The rape of Europa by Zeus and other stories.
bbc  news  comment  marybeard  coins  currency  design  culture  stories  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
A Point of View: In praise of wind turbines | BBC News
"The countryside is often a man-made landscape, not a natural idyll, and wind turbines are just part of that tradition, writes Will Self." A good read.
bbc  news  comment  willself  countryside  uk  environment  energy  politics  landscape  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
The 1% are the best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen | The Guardian
George Monbiot on scathing form. "Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt." "Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school."
guardian  monbiot  economics  politics  business  comment  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
The signals to motorists are setting a dangerous course | The Guardian
Peter Wilby in the Guardian on cars, fatalities, and the coalition Government's messages to motorists.
guardian  cars  motoring  politics  uk  comment 
november 2011 by blech
Il Pleut. Greece has poured vinegar on the G20's frites | BBC News
"All the stories on the news are merging into one big story." - Paul Mason on the g20 SuperCannes
bbc  news  eurozone  comment  politics  via:moleitau  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
The protesters seem more adult than politicians and plutocrats | Andrew Rawnsley | Comment is free | The Observer
via @emmaquinn and @Glinner: :Wonderful piece on the #occupy movement/s by @andrewrawnsley - Last paragraph says it all".
observer  comment  occupywallstreet  politics  economics  from instapaper
october 2011 by blech
Why euphemism is integral to modern warfare | BBC News
Will Self on fine form on Radio 4's A Point Of View.
bbc  comment  willself  defence  war  economics  politics  from instapaper
october 2011 by blech
Presumed Valid | Subsequently & Furthermore
"Apple has no philosophical problem with software patents whatsoever."
apple  patent  comment  from delicious
july 2011 by blech
Ken MacLeod: SF opens up the universe | guardian.co.uk
"Science fiction is almost the only way that recognition of this vast non-human reality impinges on literature and the arts. In mainstream fiction, unless the plot requires Australia, the Earth might as well be flat."
guardian  comment  kenmacleod  sciencefiction  religion  literature  from delicious
july 2011 by blech
Killing bin Laden: Let's call it a day | The Economist
A perceptive roundup of, and addition to, commentary about the deat of Osama bin Laden from the Economist's Democracy in America blog, pointing out that there's not so much to celebrate.
economist  osamabinladen  terrorism  us  politics  comment  from delicious
may 2011 by blech
Lionel Logue and the king | Ian Jack | Comment is free | The Guardian
A good piece by Ian Jack in the Guardian from January on the King's Speech (including a corrective side-note about Churchill).
guardian  film  kingsspeech  comment  history  from instapaper
march 2011 by blech
David Wojnarowicz Ruckus, as Viewed From Britain | NYTimes.com
"It has something to do with the ideal of the American Everyman. As with the military or medicine, so with museums, we are by national inclination meddlers. Europeans are not, which is why they have reacted to the Smithsonian flap with the same mildly appalled bafflement that they express toward American opposition to the health care bill. It all seems inexplicable to them." The NYT on Wojnarowicz, Sensation, Tate, the Smithsonian, and attitudes. 
art  culture  nytimes  newspapers  comment  uk  us  europe  from delicious
january 2011 by blech
1.21.11 - London | David Byrne's Journal
"I decided to try what are referred to here as Boris Bikes—a bike hire system that was recently installed. It is modeled after the French Velib system. Barclays Bank is a sponsor." "Would a US bank do the same? One Goldman Sachs exec’s bonus would probably cover a whole city’s worth of these things." David Byrne on London's bike hire. Unlike Sinclair, he hits fewer troubles and seems fairly happy with it.
london  cyclehire  comment  cycling  via:jystewart  from delicious
january 2011 by blech
Owen Hatherley: A flat festival tonic for Britain | The Guardian
"The new festival – especially if it gives in and rebuilds the Skylon – will be an exercise in nostalgia, in morbid and wildly inaccurate historical analogy, at a time when we desperately need an infusion of the original festival's socialist, futuristic spirit."
london  architecture  modernism  history  austerity  owenhatherley  via:mondoagogo  culture  nostalgia  comment  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
Debt: another word for guilt | FT Magazine
Sometimes, whole nations get their irrational economic ideas from ancient folk beliefs. Government debt looks like a case in point.
economics  ft  comment  debt  politics  people  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
Guernica / Detroitism
"There are three principal conventions of Detroit writing in the major media." This article looks at all of them, with the thread of the ruin photography running through the article.
us  detroit  urbanism  decay  photography  comment  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
Analysing WikiLeaks: Bruce Sterling's plot holes | The Economist
'Aaron Bady aptly captures the character of Mr Sterling's contribution when he calls it "a wonderful precis for a novel about Wikileaks; it’s fun to read, and it even bears a distinct resemblance to reality (if reality were a Bruce Sterling novel)". I would differ from Mr Bady only in calling it a "rambling, tendentious, free-associative sketch of a precis of a novel about WikiLeaks."' And there was me thinking I was the only one who thought Blast Shack longwinded and repetitive.
wikileaks  brucesterling  economist  comment  democracy  from delicious
december 2010 by blech
These protests are a mass demo against control | The Guardian
"The Anonymous web protests over WikiLeaks are the internet equivalent of a mass demonstration." Reading the Atlantic piece reminded me of Stallman's opinion column in the Guardian, which is also well worth reading (assuming you haven't already).
wikileaks  politics  protest  government  democracy  guardian  comment  richardstallman  from delicious
december 2010 by blech
Cold Burn | Monbiot.com
"Sod all that, my correspondents insist: just look out of the window. No explanation of the numbers, no description of the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Arctic Dipole, no reminder of current temperatures in other parts of the world, can compete with the observation than there’s a foot of snow outside."
weather  climatechange  comment  science  observationbias  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
Delicious Closing Leaves a Bad Taste | Going To Be Big
Charlie O'Donnell on the Delicious fallout: "[It's] unfortunate because it really hurts Yahoo!’s ability to make purchases in the future.  To shut off such an important asset in the history of Web 2.0 really means they’ll pull the plug on anything.  I certainly wouldn’t want anything I built winding up there (unless they were the only bidder on the face of the earth), given how well they’ve proven to be able to take care of things.  And they wonder why they couldn’t get deals done for Facebook, Groupon or Foursquare."
delicious  yahoo  comment  acquisition  via:straup  from delicious
december 2010 by blech
The man who kicked the hornet's nest | The Guardian
"As the disclosures continue, a number of questions about the way the world has changed are becoming more clearly framed." A Guardian article that's well worth reading.
wikileaks  guardian  comment  editorial  from delicious
december 2010 by blech
Not such wicked leaks | Presseurop – English
For the celebrated novelist and intellectual Umberto Eco, the Wikileaks affair or "Cablegate" not only shows up the hypocrisy that governs relations between states, citizens and the press, but also presages a return to more archaic forms of communication.
wikileaks  umbertoeco  article  comment  surveillance  diplomacy  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
@Pinboard: Redesigned delicious... | Twitter
"Redesigned delicious bookmarklet now requires TWO clicks to submit. I owe the delicious design team a beer."
delicious  ui  pinboard  comment  from delicious
december 2010 by blech
On the Telephone | Lee Maguire
"In real life, the phone boxes have become invisible in terms of utility. Billboards with a shape historically determined. Vestigial street-furniture. Bizarro morris columns." Lee on telephone boxes.
telephone  technology  architecture  everydaylife  culture  hardware  comment  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
social-creature » Why Iron Man Is The First 21st Century Superhero
"In the comic books, it took Stark 40 years to make this move. For Superman or Spiderman or Batman or virtually any other superhero from the prior century (save some like the X-Men) their secret identities were their most sacred possessions, the keys to their undoings, and they fought as hard to protect them as to save humanity itself. But in the 21st century, Tony Stark’s approach to privacy reflects how Millennials now think of the concept."
film  criticism  socialnetwork  privacy  identity  comment  from instapaper
may 2010 by blech
Redefining the Camera
"My iPhone can tell me where I am, tell me where the sun is and the moon will be, put watermarks on my images, stitch panos, apply tilt-and-shift-like effect, email them or send them directly to places I want them, and much, much more. My US$7999 D3x can't do any of those things. Doesn't anyone else find something wrong with this picture?" The whole thing piece (collection, really) is long, but well worth reading if you're interested in cameras, customisation, and computing.
camera  photography  technology  iphone  nikon  computer  comment  future  via:ssp  from instapaper
april 2010 by blech
A world without planes | BBC News - Today
Alain de Botton's thoughts on a world without air travel, sparked by the current lack of flights across much of Europe.
bbc  news  today  radio4  alaindebotton  flight  aviation  peakoil  future  comment  from delicious
april 2010 by blech
Knots and geography | Eye blog
Subtitled "A psychologist challenges the Beck gospel of Underground octolinearity", this is a short introduction by Maxwell Roberts in Eye magazine to the ideas he explored in his underground maps exhibition in Southend. (Must do something about getting that to London...)
london  map  psychology  design  wayfinding  exhibition  comment 
march 2010 by blech
Knots and geography | Eye blog
Subtitled "A psychologist challenges the Beck gospel of Underground octolinearity", this is a short introduction by Maxwell Roberts in Eye magazine to the ideas he explored in his underground maps exhibition in Southend. (Must do something about getting that to London...)
london  map  psychology  design  wayfinding  exhibition  comment  from delicious
march 2010 by blech
Let's visualise the Digital Economy bill | guardian.co.uk
"I've been trying to work out how much the digital economy bill has changed in its progress through the House of Lords. The answer: a lot (that's 263 differences in the bottom-left hand corner). But does it make much sense? Not really - the bill consists of lots of amendments to other acts, such as the Communications Act 2003, so it really is like trying to understand an operating system while only seeing a few of the programs."
politics  uk  digitaleconomybill  guardian  comment  legislation 
march 2010 by blech
Clive Thompson: Park the Car, Take the Bus | Magazine
"We should change our focus to the other side of the equation and curtail not the texting but the driving. This may sound a bit facetious, but I’m serious. When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they’re doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving? The answer, of course, is public transit."
sms  culture  us  europe  transport  wired  comment 
february 2010 by blech
Let the sunlight in on climate change | New Scientist
"Public attitudes to science are changing. The IPCC was established before the internet revolution. Like it or not, its closed world of peer review is no longer possible, let alone desirable." The most recent New Scientist leader calls for the IPCC to report more often and with more openness about its internal processes.
newscientist  comment  ipcc  climatechange  science 
january 2010 by blech
A Makeover for the BART Map | Design Observer
"Like a child drawing, the old BART map could take you on a flight of fancy, but wouldn't get you to and from work." However: "If I consider the old BART map in the context of the visual culture of the San Francisco Bay Area, I am no longer certain of its inferiority." An interesting piece touching on the cultural links between subway maps and the cities (or areas) they depict. (I prefer the new map, but then, I'm a Londoner.)
sanfrancisco  design  map  bart  geography  culture  comment 
january 2010 by blech
Kindle and e-books | ChristianLindholm.com
Compare with Lisa Jardine: "e-books have some powerful benefits: they are small, light. A dictionary is few clicks away. You can have lots of different books with you" "What I did enjoy most was the one-handed effortless usage of reading and clicking next page."
books  ebook  digital  comment  via:blackbeltjones 
january 2010 by blech
Page-turning passion | BBC News
Usually I'm a fan of Lisa Jardine's A Point Of View pieces, but this one strikes the wrong note. Digital books will differ from paper books, but to say that nonlinear reading will vanish (won't Find make it easier?) or that annotation will die (I can get Blog All Dog-Eared Pages posts from anyone, not just friends I happen to live near) seems short-sighted. The implicit criticism of DRM might be well-judged, though.
books  publishing  digital  lisajardine  comment  bbc  ebook 
january 2010 by blech
On Lenses For Small Cameras | dpreview
An analysis of lenses for Micro Four Thirds and similar cameras. "The lenses we'd really like to see [are] fast, compact primes covering a range of focal lengths from wide to short telephoto." I don't disagree, but I do wonder if there's not too much wishing going on in here; there are very few digital-specific primes for APS-C bodies. On the other hand, the new mounts can't reuse working (but not optimal) older lenses. We'll see.
photography  camera  lens  fourthirds  microfourthirds  panasonic  dpreview  comment 
january 2010 by blech
Cities within cities are eating up Britain's streets | The Guardian
Anna Minton in the Guardian: "Urban regeneration has seen entire districts pass into the hands of private companies – and their security guards". Most of the recent photography horror stories seem to start with a jobsworth security guard getting annoyed with someone taking a picture of a building, which should be legal, but in these half-private spaces, isn't.
guardian  comment  cities  publicspace  photography  law  urbanism 
december 2009 by blech
Would you want your son to be a plumber? | The Guardian
"[Crawford's book eloquently] makes the case for what [he] calls 'manual competence' in an age when the young are being steered instead towards 'the most ghostly kinds of work' and an insecure future in offices."
guardian  comment  ianjack  getexcitedandmakethings  work  employment  society 
december 2009 by blech
Why must adults whinge about TV spoilers? | The Guardian
"As an iPlayer/Sky+/TiVo-addled nation, we refuse to watch TV together. And now we can't keep up with the TV we've harvested, we've lost the sense of perspective to let anyone else discuss it within our earshot. The only thing truly 'spoiled' is us." I'm not quite as militant as Grace Dent, but really: if it's been out a while, there's only so far I'll tiptoe.
television  comment  opinion  narrative  spoilers  via:infovore 
december 2009 by blech
'Right to dry' could wean US off consumption | New Scientist
Against tumble dryers and their horrific energy consumption. "Clothes lines evoke a negative emotional reaction from many Americans, who view them as flags of poverty." Americans are a bit broken.
newscientist  comment  energy  consumption  everydaylife 
november 2009 by blech
The Meaning of Photoshop | Subtraction.com
Khoi Vinh, slightly edited: "We’ve spent the better part of a decade and a half debating digital privacy, but compare the number of people who have been exposed to the sheer amount of manipulated, unreal and just plain fake imagery that assaults each of us every day, and the case for a more robust discussion about digital imaging looks like a pretty good one."
photoshop  images  manipulation  comment  culture  via:blackbeltjones  via:preoccupations 
september 2009 by blech
Helpless towers are being buried | Building Design
"The mania for recladding post-war high-rise office or council blocks is more pronounced in some places than others, but it extends all over Europe. It was very popular in the eighties and nineties with municipal towers, where it was (rather bafflingly) thought that encasing the buildings in plastic would remove the stigma of poverty." I miss the old concrete Stock Exchange Tower.
architecture  building  comment  owenhatherley  via:cityofsound 
september 2009 by blech
Out of this word | New Statesman
"the main argument of Postproduction fits Moon very well. It is a post-sampling film; it exists, in some way, as a remix of past futures." Toby Litt on science fiction. (Seems like this is of New Statesman is quite heavy on this sort of commentary; there's also a Bonnie Greer review of the new Atwood book, as well as the Banks interview.)
sciencefiction  film  books  comment  tobylitt  newstatesman 
september 2009 by blech
Space: Flying high | The Economist
"America’s government has no money for its human-spaceflight plans. The private sector has plenty". Coverage of SpaceX and others getting contracts to service the ISS, while NASA's spam-in-a-can seems to be flailing.
economist  space  nasa  comment  article  spacex  virgingalactic 
september 2009 by blech
Sunsets | Dan Germain
"the plain truth is that everyone knows that photos of sunsets are never as good as they actually seem when you're looking at them with your eyes, but we keep taking them anyway"
design  photography  comment  blogcomment?  interesting2009 
september 2009 by blech
The positive energy of counterfactuals | Magical Nihilism
"I was in a particularly punchy mood as I wrote I think, and the backdrop of a summer thunderstorm tipped me in a direction that… Well, let’s just say I wasn’t exactly surprised when it wasn’t printed – it’s not quite ‘on-brand” for [Howies]"
geoengineering  environment  politics  comment  re:blackbeltjones 
september 2009 by blech
Cambridge Spies | sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy
Well, this isn't your usual Cambridge travelogue. Interesting, though.
architecture  comment  cambridge 
september 2009 by blech
Cue the violins for American Telephone & Telegraph | ben fry
I liked the photos of the AT&T war room ^W^W control centre ^W center in the New York Times article, but Ben Fry takes the time to do write a great response.
at&t  nytimes  telephone  mobile  comment 
september 2009 by blech
Magazine: Early dinner | BBC News
Laurie Taylor on food and class. A good read (and hopefully a signifier of a good Something Understood tonight).
bbc  news  magazine  comment  uk  class  food  tea 
august 2009 by blech
You give me road rage | BBC News
"Sometimes you can become ideologically correct by simply standing still. For years I've thoroughly disliked everything about cars. I don't want to drive or be driven in cars. I don't want to talk about the relative merits of different cars." Laurie Taylor is going after my own heart there.
bbc  news  magazine  motoring  car  comment 
july 2009 by blech
The One in Which I Call Out Hacker News | bitquabit
"A developer, asked how hard something will be to clone, simply does not think about the polish, because the polish is incidental to the implementation." On reimplementing Stack Overflow (or anything, really) in a weekend.
development  design  ui  comment 
july 2009 by blech
Why trying to stop filesharers is like herding cats | Guardian
Charles Arthur: "an organisation that relies on pieces of paper written and considered by lawyers (most MPs are) is not going to be able to catch up with the internet, where new ways of breaking existing laws (copyright, usually) are discovered all the time"
guardian  technology  comment  digitalbritain  report  via:preoccupations 
june 2009 by blech
What you should know about chiropractic | New Scientist
Edzard Ernst, who co-wrote a book on alternative medicine with Simon Singh, examines the history of chiropractic and the evidence for its medical efficacy, both for back pain and for the wider range of ailments some of its practitioners claim it can deal with. For back pain, "there is some encouraging evidence", but that's as good as it gets.
newscientist  chiropractic  medicine  evidence  science  comment 
may 2009 by blech
Little Boots doesn't speak for synth pop | guardian.co.uk
I've trimmed the title - it also takes a pop (ha) at La Roux - but this is a good piece that might open up some more interesting stuff to find to listen to. I've just started properly listening to Ladytron's Velocifero, and it's really good, and is mentioned in the comments; more like that would be just dandy.
guardian  music  electropop  pop  comment 
may 2009 by blech
Evan Harris | The Economist
Comments by Evan Harris; the only one at the time of posting is on the subject of the Simon Singh vs BCA case.
science  law  uk  criticism  comment 
may 2009 by blech
7-Eleven Is A Joke, And Other Branding Complaints | io9
'that intent, pretentious or not, is entirely undercut by seeing a Jeep double page ad in this week's People magazine that features a Terminator robot standing in a stream, fishing, with the tagline "Everyone can use a little break from judgment day."'
io9  sciencefiction  advertising  comment 
may 2009 by blech
I like rev="canonical" | 0xDECAFBAD
Les Orchard on the speed of rev-canonical's spread amongst the alpha geeks, the fact that it's not consumer ready yet, and... oh, just go and read it, ok? (I think I'm now also convinced by the choice of rev not rel="shortened" or similar, though.)
web  html  url  revcanonical  comment 
april 2009 by blech
Britain on film: Through a pint glass, darkly | The Economist
"Both [“The Boat That Rocked” and “The Damned United”] are tales of rebellious underdogs and male friendship. But they are otherwise very different. Taken together, the films, and the critical response to them, encapsulate the ways in which Britain imagines its past, and hint at the country’s current mood." An interesting read from Bagehot.
economist  film  cinema  culture  britain  uk  comment 
april 2009 by blech
re: diverselessness | tecznotes
"I'm an avid user of Fffffound!, and they have a terrible recommendation engine - it routinely pulls you off into the weeds and thickets of a single prolific ffffinder's stream, and woe to you if that person who has great taste in architectural renderings also has a thing for soft porn." I have removed photos just to "unsubscribe" from some ffffound users.
ffffound  comment  recommedations  collectiveintelligence 
april 2009 by blech
the New Generation of British SF | Blasphemous Geometries
"I then took it upon myself to expand the idea that these books were all thematically connected and named the trend Barleypunk in reference to the Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker sitcom Nathan Barley" "[Barleypunk's] roots are in the low levels of SF that have been seeping out into mainstream culture since the appearance of the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises." Is it bad that I want to read a lot of these?
sciencefiction  uk  literature  comment 
march 2009 by blech
Britain's railways: most expensive in Europe | The Guardian
Christian Wolmar: "a lucky few can get from London to Birmingham for a fiver, but most people would much happier if they knew they could always do the journey for, say, £20. It is the uncertainty of not knowing what fare you are going to pay that deters people from travelling by rail."
uk  transport  railway  comment  politics  guardian  christianwolmar 
march 2009 by blech
Let's hear it for the scientists | More Intelligent Life
"Living, intelligent biography should connect, somehow, to the central concerns of civilisation. Ours is a science-based one." Andrew Marr makes a plea for biographies of scientists.
science  biography  article  comment 
january 2009 by blech
A Really Long Heat Wave | The Intersection
'global warming could change the planet for the next 100,000 years, which is how long it may take for igneous rocks to "breathe" back in all the carbon dioxide we've released over just a few centuries'
climatechange  book  review  anthropocene  comment 
january 2009 by blech
Patently Ridiculous! | Penny Arcade!
Tycho on some rather daft patent suits, but more interestingly, on iPhone games. He makes a bunch of good points, especially about the battery life (if I forgot to go back to the home screen, Rolando would drain it entirely in about six hours).
pennyarcade  iphone  games  comment  patent  rolando 
january 2009 by blech
Happy new year! I'm leaving Tumblr. | Not raving, but droning
An interesting, and probably largely correct, list of gripes about Tumblr. I suspect I don't find the problems as annoying as Samuel does because I'm not using the site as a does-everything place, any more than I do the same on Facebook.
tumblr  interface  culture  comment  navelgazing 
january 2009 by blech
2009 Web Predictions | ReadWriteWeb
A consensus on Facebook Connect becoming de-facto single sign on everywhere (albeit with reservations, and one vote for Google instead), with a few people talking about lifestreaming (and more importantly dealing with the firehose, so filtering/recommendation). Worth a scan through, although it does peter out towards the end.
web  development  facebook  facebookconnect  openid  google  twitter  aggregation  lifestream  comment 
december 2008 by blech
World famous- within your own borders | BBC News
Clive James gives a point of view: "Everyone knows that Mexicans are Mexicans but few of us can tell a Canadian from an American unless the Canadian is speaking French."
bbc  news  comment  culture  film  society  canada  australia  uk  us 
december 2008 by blech
Amazon MP3 goes live in the UK | Music Ally
More on Amazon MP3's UK launch. "There’s some indie-sized holes in the catalogue at the time of writing - no Oasis apart from the spoken-word Wibbling Rivalry EP, no Arctic Monkeys, a single live track from Franz Ferdinand. Interestingly, the same artists that were missing from Nokia’s Comes With Music"
amazon  mp3  comment  music  download 
december 2008 by blech
The Opposite of Momentum | kd.to_tumblr
An interesting rant on the future, or perhaps lack of future, of Ruby. It's interesting he mentions the JavaScript arms race- perhaps the next big thing (if it's not actually JS) will be a specification with competing runtimes, rather than the Perl/Ruby model of a single official intepreter.
ruby  comment  development  performance  implementation 
november 2008 by blech
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