The Blog
08 Apr 2013 This.
"What needs addressing as a matter of absolute urgency right now, however, is that Thatcher 's legacy is one of gross, almost comically staggering inequality. We are not all in this together. We are heading down shit creek while a tiny few of "them" are up on the clifftop holding all the paddles. Inequality, inequality, inequality, stupid. If there's good to come from her death, beyond a few street parties, it's that we realise that Thatcherism never died, was never truly even un-elected. It's time to shake ourselves, and others, out of the daze into which we were collectively not so much handbagged as headbutted back in the early 80s. Thatcherism was the worst thing to happen to this country since the Second World War and it'll carry on happening to us unless we do something about it." We need some better analysis beyond the uncritical hagiography or the rant of hatred. Perhaps this is it.   The Quietus | Opinion | Black Sky Thinking | Margaret Thatcher: Still More Alive Than She Herself Dared To Dream »Your celebrations at Margaret Thatcher's death are misplaced, says David Stubbs, for [from: Google+ Posts] [ 08-Apr-13 6:46pm ] 07 Apr 2013 30 years on and Alexie Sayle's comments about Stoke Newington are still as relevant as ever. Hard to believe this was 1982. It feels like yesterday.
[from: Google+ Posts] [ 07-Apr-13 7:59am ] 06 Apr 2013 I know we live in a TL;DR culture and you haven't got time to properly express what you think and feel or add much value to the link you shared. But if it's too long, either read it anyway and attempt to comprehend it, or don't pass comment at all.
Language is the ultimate technology In fact, I'll go so far as to say: It's not okay to fail at written language as a modern, technologically-empowered human being. And no, recording yourself talking about the idea and then posting it on Youtube is not an acceptable alternative to writing it down. TL;DV is also a problem made worse because it's much harder to skim and speed-read video.   Too long? Read anyway. »Wherein I rant at medium length about functional literacy and language competency in knowledge work and information technology. Look, I realize that we live in a TL;DR culture. I lived through 8 ye...... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 06-Apr-13 9:17am ] 05 Apr 2013 With the end of Yahoo! Messages, Yahoo! succeeded in destroying the most amount of history in the shortest amount of time, certainly on purpose, in known memory.
http://ianmilligan.ca/2013/04/03/yahoo-sucks-historians-wake-up/ Dream on. The industry doesn't do hundred-year periods, and that's why digital archives are no more stable than, say, the finance industry. http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2013/04/dead-media-beat-speculating-about-migration-hell/ "Unless we reach a stage where archival technology becomes as stable as paper and printing had been for decades, centuries even, then we cannot, unquestioning, keep all the data we digitally collect." Total data is growing faster than total storage. So we're not just creating data faster than ever, we're also forgetting it faster than ever. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.   Yahoo! Has Probably Destroyed the Most History, Ever - And Historians Need to Wake Up »Yahoo! succeeded in destroying the most amount of history in the shortest amount of time, certainly on purpose, in known memory. Millions of files, user accounts, all gone. - Archive.Org (click thr...... [from: Google+ Posts] If I mute a person and mute their post, don't keep putting that post back into my notifications each time somebody else comments on it. Duh!
[from: Google+ Posts] [ 05-Apr-13 5:48pm ] 04 Apr 2013 [from: Google+ Posts] [ 04-Apr-13 4:01pm ] Without RSS all we'd have is pictures of cats and breakfast.
 : Why I love RSS and You Do Too »Even if you don't use an RSS reader, you still use RSS. If you subscribe to any podcasts, you use RSS. Flipboard and Twitter are RSS readers, even if it's not obvious and they do other things besides.... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 04-Apr-13 9:47am ] 01 Apr 2013 March came in like a Lion, it should have gone out like a Lamb but actually went out like a Tiger. And now Spring has arrived.
No. April Fool. It's still Winter. [from: Google+ Posts] [ 01-Apr-13 7:46am ] 31 Mar 2013 It's more important to not buy in than to not sell out.
R.U. Sirus for president!   An Interview with R.U. Sirius - Counterculture Icon - Transhumanity.net »Rachel Haywire interviews R.U Sirius.Rachel Haywire is the founder of the Extreme Futurist Festival and a leading voice in digital media. She is known as an author, music producer, model, performance ... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 31-Mar-13 7:17pm ] 30 Mar 2013 If you share a post with circles, you can't share it with a community as well. Really, why not? I want to.
[from: Google+ Posts] [ 30-Mar-13 7:51pm ] So how much did the other fast food burger chain pay to get a product placement name check in tonight's episode of the BBC's Dr Who? I know it's now a global franchise, but, really?
And they couldn't name Jammy Dodgers? Is it reasonable to think that the BBC making money from things like Dr Who like this makes the license fee money go further and help to fund all the properly good things the BBC does, like the Afghanistan pashtun World Service (yes, I know it got cut.). Or, is that argument flawed? Meanwhile USians have been complaining of not being able to listen to Neverwhere on iPlayer due to region restrictions. Well, I'm very happy for my license fee to pay for them to hear it. Please make it so. [from: Google+ Posts] [ 30-Mar-13 7:49pm ] 28 Mar 2013 27 Mar 2013 Two excellent reviewers
http://thequietus.com/articles/11760-hyperspecific-21-electronic-music-review-dj-rashad-matmos-covered-in-sand Rory Gibb's Hyperspecific column on The Quietus is always good value. http://whitenoisereview.blogspot.co.uk/ White Noise has his finger on the pulse of UK Armchair Dance, or whatever it's called.  The Quietus | Features | Hyperspecific | The Month's Electronic Music: Rollin' Down A Lonely Highway »In his latest electronic music column, Rory Gibb selects a handful of the month's most exciting releases to explore in-depth, from DJ Rashad's sublime deconstructions of language to Matmos' experiment... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 27-Mar-13 9:50am ] Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, The Jagged Orbit, Shockwave Rider should be required reading. They all resonate well with the world in 2013.
http://www.themillions.com/2013/03/the-weird-1969-new-wave-sci-fi-novel-that-correctly-predicted-the-current-day.html   The Millions : The Weird 1969 New Wave Sci-Fi Novel that Correctly Predicted the Current Day »cover Stand on Zanzibar is that rarity among science fiction novels -- it really made accurate predictions about the future. The book, published in 1969, is set in the year 2010, and this allows us to ... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 27-Mar-13 8:54am ] 25 Mar 2013 Yay! Crutchlow on pole with the fastest combined time for the three days.
 MotoGP originally shared this post: Crutchlow quickest in final pre-season test http://www.motogp.com/en/news/2013/jerez+day3+test+motogp  [from: Google+ Posts] [ 25-Mar-13 8:16pm ]  Ian Wheeler originally shared this post: Flat out, knee down, elbow on the deck and he still manages to flick me the V's on the way past!  [from: Google+ Posts] [ 25-Mar-13 7:50am ] 24 Mar 2013 Sub-pontian idea of the day for G+
1) Collect all the most annoying people you can find in one circle 2) Give the circle an un-threatening name like, say, Sci-Fi 3) Share the circle widely with your followers 4) Sit back in the knowledge of a job well done [from: Google+ Posts] Marquez on a damp track. What is he doing? How does he do that?
http://pix.crash.net/motorsport/710/PA1296054.jpg http://www.crash.net/motogp/picturearchive/0/126/2013+motogp/4876/photos.html  [from: Google+ Posts] Another example of why I find Charles Stross' blog to be essential and thought provoking reading.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/the-permanent-revolution.html Today's rant is about the ideological flavour of a belief in endless exponential growth and what it means for society. My own thoughts are too confused here to be offer much comment. But this. Robert Wilson's and Terence McKenna's ideas about accelerating change proved to be too strong. The novelty curve didn't go vertical in an exponential growth singularity in Dec 2012. So the model was too simplistic. But a sigmoid curve where we're past the steepest part and rate of change is levelling out is also too simplistic a model. And so back to Limits to Growth again. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2846/28462101.jpg That model recognises global macro economics as a whole series of interdependent variables, all with implications and all with major lags. Almost every single run results in exponential growth, sigmoid slowing and then a catastrophic correction. Then there's Buckminster Fuller and Thermodynamics. The laws of thermodynamics and especially the second law are usually quoted without the words "in a closed system". So one approach for dealing with the downsides of exponential growth and this statement "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist - Kenneth Boulter, Economist." is to look for ways in which the system can be changed so that it is no longer closed. In 17th Century England, this would avoid the resource limitations of sheep and wool via imperialism. In the 21st century this might be post-industrial knowledge work, the industrialisation of space, much greater and direct exploitation of solar power and others. That doesn't nullify the resource limits of oil energy or minerals, or the negative drivers such as pollution, but it does perhaps allow us to sidestep them. Meanwhile, 99.9% of the population of the earth has a long way to go before it has the lifestyle and comforts of Louis XIV so explonential change, improvement and the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed.   The permanent revolution - Charlie's Diary »This is a statement of ideology, not of fact. For most of the duration of the human species, change has not been an overriding influence on our lives. In fact, it's only since roughly 1800 that you co... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 24-Mar-13 9:50am ] Another write up from a Google Reader founder. Interesting that all the same reasons for writing it originally still exist. And surprising to see the same old Atom vs RSS enmities being repeated again after all these years.
  The Evolution Of Google Reader Started With A Crash | TechCrunch »Editor's note: Jason Shellen is a former Googler and founding product manager of Google Reader. He is now co-founder at Boxer and advisor at Tapedeck. As part of Google's recent announcement that i... [from: Google+ Posts] 
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