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2012-10-15 (Monday)

Writing

  1. They hate competition

    On companies hating competition.

  2. Slender gains

    A bit from a review of a book by Katherine Boo, about how the poor complain about their neighbours more than they do about the rich.

Links

  1. James Meek · How We Happened to Sell Off Our Electricity · LRB 13 September 2012

    Plenty of people linked to this at the time, but I forgot. Now I am. A good read on who now owns the UK’s power.

  2. The Gay Path Through the Courts by David Cole | The New York Review of Books

    Subscribers only unfortunately. But I liked this for its descriptions of how the Supreme Court rules on things, and how cases that are ostensibly about a particular crime are used to force a decision on constitutional issues. Also about how the Court tries (ideally) to follow, rather than lead, society.

Tweets

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @alanconnor @alicebartlett We’ll struggle on. It takes us a week at the best of times.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    Looks like it’ll be possible to live in Tharg’s Nerve Centre: bit.ly/V2fEpk (King’s Reach Tower to be refurbished, 20 flrs of flats)

  • philgyford’s avatar

    Making Pivotal Tracker reflect reality. As much as it can.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @tominsam @blech Yeah, the lack of any definite word is worrying. I wouldn’t start using a service like that now, but I was young, carefree…

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @alanconnor Test tweet or not, today’s cryptic has me and @alicebartlett scratching our heads. We’re only used to the regular Monday setters

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @alruii Just googled… Red Bull sold 4.631 billion cans in 2011. Coke serve 1.6 billion drinks every *day*. They could go to Mars by balloon.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @alruii I can’t help thinking Coke could have been doing even more silly/worthwhile things with their profits over the years.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @iamdanw @jaggeree @tomtaylor Gentleman Amateurs are where the action is. (Or Lady Amateurs of course, although doesn’t have the same ring.)

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @tomtaylor I can do that much myself.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @tomtaylor I’ll let you know if I can’t find a “rock star”. I don’t want to end up settling for a “guru” or a “badass”.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @tomtaylor No, a “rock star”.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    Do I know any London-based freelancers who know their Node.js? Or do you know any?

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @robertmchardy I *think* that would fix it. Only took six years! bit.ly/RwnDx0 I’ll just have to hack things for now. Again.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    Another Django project, another round of swearing about contrib.auth requiring users to have usernames, not just email addresses.

  • philgyford’s avatar

    Wishing all at @GDSTeam good luck for this week!

  • philgyford’s avatar

    @tedmills Or marijuana-fuelled brawls and domestic violence.