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  1. Amazon, Apple, and the beauty of low margins — Remains of the Day

    An interesting look at Amazon’s business, low margins. stock turnover, pricing strategies, competitors, etc. (via Migurski)

  2. London Centre for Book Arts

    New, in Hackney, devoted to artists’ books. They do classes on printing, binding, etc. (via the Guardian)

  3. Complete Single Server Django Stack Tutorial | Apreche.net

    Really clear and comprehensive guide to setting up a Django site on Ubuntu.

  4. ‘A Few Sordid Details’

    The “Doomed Bourgeois in Love” tumblr has been going well over Christmas. I love that it finds so many little things to riff off in the world of a very simple film (‘Metropolitan’).

  5. Makeshift // Catalogue // Pylons of Great Britain

    Paricularly for the spotter’s guide image of different pylon designs, and the construction diagrams. (via notes.husk.org)

  6. 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person | Cracked.com

    Advice for life aimed at young men, bit probably useful to more. “Saying that you’re a nice guy is like a restaurant whose only selling point is that the food doesn’t make you sick.” (via Monevator)

  7. Philgyford’s 2012 Jam Odyssey

    Brilliant thing. I put more stuff on ThisIsMyJam than I thought I had. And this makes me want to do more in 2013.

  8. Ethical Funds - Ethical Fund Directory, Ethical Investment, Ethical Financial Advice

    Another list of UK ethical funds, rated by someone else’s criteria.

  9. Ethical investment: failing to keep up? | FairPensions

    A recent survey of ethical fund providers in the UK. (I’m scrabbling for anything to go on, because you’d have to spend weeks researching this stuff to actually have a real clue.)

  10. Stuff from 2012 – best Bridle piece

    Best Ben Terrett blog post of 2012.

  11. Light Entertainment (London Review of Books)

    Andrew O’Hagan on Jimmy Savile etc. Quite good on the general difference in TV and radio culture in the 50s/60s/70s, although it still feels like a very brief skim over the hard-to-grasp era/topic/atmosphere. (A bit late to this, catching up.)

  12. If I May Speak Procedurally, Sir: Building The British Countryside Generator | BIG ROBOT

    Lovely to read something like this about the British countryside rather than, say, futuristic cityscapes.

  13. The Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud

    Because small, profitable, slow-growing businesses are start-ups too,

  14. The Quiet Wikideath of BBS History

    Wikipedia is not a source, it’s “reality slash fiction”.

  15. [Updated] The rise and fall of personal computing | asymco

    Just spent a while trying to find these graphs, having seen them once before. So now they’re here. Really interesting, market share of computing platforms since 1975.

  16. How London’s Silicon Roundabout really got started — European technology news

    Brilliant - really glad this got written up. Matt Biddulph’s timeline of how “Silicon Roundabout” became a thing.

  17. Jones the planner: Hackney Hipsters

    Ignoring the hipster stuff, a good look at some of the developing and developed parts of Hackney. “There is a fundamental mismatch between what ‘regeneration’ does and the sort of organic development that resulted in the Shoreditch of today. … Most developers do exactly the opposite of what makes Shoreditch successful.” (via @amcewen)

  18. Diary (London Review of Books)

    Lovely article by Emily Witt about online dating in New York and San Franciso. “The mind contains very few truths that the body withholds. There is little of import in an encounter between two bodies that would fail to be revealed rather quickly. Until the bodies are introduced, seduction is only provisional.”

  19. At Hyde Park Corner (London Review of Books)

    Jonathan Meades on fine form, on the newish Bomber Command Memorial. “The failure of British modernism and of today’s synthetic modernism to devise a memorious idiom provides an ample justification for the mongers of easy-viewin’ classicism to dump their stuff indiscriminately.”

  20. Buyer’s Guide – Work Backpacks

    Yet another list of nice backpacks that don’t look like they’re designed for mountaineering.

  21. Fund directory - Investment Management Association

    Compared to other fund searching tools, this is quite quick and simple, and has an “Ethical” filter. (via Monevator)

  22. Old Street – putting the genie back in the bottle? | The power of the network

    Yes (except when he says “Old Street” he means “Old Street Roundabout”). Putting a big building in the middle of a horrific, people-unfriendly space won’t help much. I’d go further: pedestrianise everything from the Foundry to the roundabout. (via @cityofsound)

  23. Times Higher Education - This could be huge…

    Good article on online courses, a bit more practical than Clay Shirky’s (also good but different). Challenges of teaching one, how can they make money, what are the implications of universities recognising the qualifications, etc. (via @annegalloway)

  24. Why People Really Love Technology: An Interview with Genevieve Bell - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic

    Very interesting interview with the Intel researcher. Some good bits on demographics of the internet; fear (or not) of robots; physical vs digital; tactility; fear of the TV red button. (via @annegalloway)

  25. How a high-rise craze is ruining London’s skyline | Art and design | The Observer

    “Strata waddles into the background from stage left, like SpongeBob SquarePants in a production of Hamlet.” Yes, all this. (via @cityofsound)

  26. Carljm / django-lockdown / source / — Bitbucket

    I can’t believe password-protecting Django sites is still such a pain, but this is the best solution I’ve found so far. The latest version isn’t on PyPI though; had to pip install the most recent commit specifically.

  27. Scoop! The inside story of the news website that saved the BBC • The Register

    The story behind building the BBC News website, back in the day, some of it apparently accurate.

  28. Subcompact Publishing — by Craig Mod

    I’ve only read a third of this so far but it’s very good. There are so many opportunities for small publishing these days, while the old, slow big publishers struggle. (via @readmatter)

  29. On Shoreditch & informal innovation

    Alexandra on startup “hubs” and the changes in Shoreditch. Good stuff, if a bit depressing. I’d also like to read more about this with a longer perspective too. 2007 as a starting point is rather recent.

  30. Rickshaw: A JavaScript toolkit for creating interactive time-series graphs

    A nice wrapper on top of D3. Looks very handy. (via @nickludlam)