Links
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Fleet street fox: 43 and never been spanked.
Other people have made similar points, but it bears repeating over and over. That Gove and co can get away with stealing taxpayers’ money while normal people get months in prison for doing very little is obscene. (via @megpickard)
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The Living City (1970) - YouTube
I haven’t watched it all yet, but looks interesting: a 1970 half hour film about the post-war rebuilding of the City of London, from the London Metropolitan Archives.
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Martin Woodhouse - Telegraph
“Martin Woodhouse, who has died aged 78, was a psychologist and medic, but worked variously as a novelist, scriptwriter, engineer, programmer, government planner, artificial intelligence researcher and perfumer.” That’s a life. (via Infovore)
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Stop Coddling the Super-Rich - NYTimes.com
Billionaire Jim Andrews in ‘Doonesbury’ won’t be pleased when he reads Warren Buffett’s latest article.
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Why Twitter’s Oral Culture Irritates Bill Keller (and why this is an important issue) | technosociology
Very good, and worth some time. On how Twitter is conversation, and how that compares with written language that some people are concerned is threatened by social media. (via @blech)
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Twitpic, Twitter, Lockerz, YFrog, Mobypic – good or bad? | Jon Boyes - Photographer - blog
A comparison of the T&Cs of five Twitter-oriented image hosting sites. Avoid Twitter, Lockerz and Twitpic; use YFrog or Mobypic.
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‘I have lived over half of my life’ | Society | The Observer
“I felt like something beautiful was rushing at me, moving past and around me at breakneck speed, and I couldn’t gather it in and I didn’t want to see it go.” All this, although the end of the article feels dully clichéd.
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The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom – Telegraph Blogs
I’ve read lots of good things about the many causes of the riots. But I can’t help but think they all come back to this kind of thing. I am fucking angry. (via everyone)
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BBC News - One word we don’t hear enough: ‘Erm’
From January 2010, Michael Blastland shows how wrong the Bank of England’s GDP projection fan charts can be. (Also, that daft “The face of uncertainty…” stock photo and caption is priceless.)
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Hackney London Riots | Stylenoir
A decent report and photos by a style mag from the London riots, #2. (via @catfunt)
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The Battle of Mare Street « Viceland.com
A decent report and photos by a style mag from the London riots, #1. (via @alanconnor)
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How to Build a Newsroom Time Machine
A student journalism class puts together a newspaper using manual typewriters, scalpels, glue, analogue photography, etc. Sounds like a good exercise and not just because I’m old(ish). (via Waxy)
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Crazy Walls
Cataloguing the walls covered in photos, newspaper clippings, string, etc by obsessive men in movies and TV shows. Because no one else seems to have done this yet.
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Planning Application Details - 149-157 Whitecross Street, EC1Y
For turning half of the row of empty buildings on Whitecross Street into four commercial units and nine flats, in a faux Victorian/Georgian style.
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Alternatives to the Singularity - “Google Docs”
“A collaborative presentation for/by grumpy futurists” (via @yoz)
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A Billion Dollars Isn’t Cool. You Know What’s Cool? Basic Human Decency (TechCrunch)
Yes, good, read. Just because dotcom folks might be lovely, and their site may, on balance, be a good thing, they’re still a business trying to raise as much money as possible, not a charity trying to make the world a better place.
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Chosen - a JavaScript plugin for jQuery and Prototype - makes select boxes better
That’s a lovely, nicely done thing. (via Infovore)
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4 key pieces of audience engagement missing from Andy Rutledge’s news redux
Also, Martin Belam’s good critique of Andy Rutledge’s unofficial redesign of a New York Times page.
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Design View / Andy Rutledge - News Redux
For completeness, I might as well link to the post that started this flurry of digital news design posts, Andy Rutledge’s attempt to redesign a page of the New York Times.
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Redesigning And Re-Thinking The News | Drawar
More new stuff on redesigning news websites. This is all part of a good discussion, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve moved on much. Yet. (via Daring Fireball)
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Designing a big news site is about more than beauty » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism
Good thoughts on why designing news websites is hard. Maybe it’s impossible with one design: too many competing stakeholders and use cases. (via Daring Fireball)
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Backspace
Lovely blast from the past, the website of Backspace (a cybercafe on Clink Street, now a Starbucks) is still (or once again?) online, from 1997 by the looks of it. (via @cakemix)
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The End of the Open University As We Know It « The Thought Stash
Ugh, the OU is increasing its course fees by around 3.5 times. I only studied with them for a term but would have considered it again. Much. much less sure about that now. (via Preoccupations)
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Oslo attacks: Why did so many experts blame Islamic terrorists? - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
I liked this, simply because of its description of the many varying angles of extremism and how the things they hate contrast and overlap. (Also Slate’s automatic iPad web display is rather nice.) (via Great Dismal)
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Stewart Lee: What I really think about Michael McIntyre : Features 2011 : Chortle : The UK Comedy Guide
On, you know, all that stupid stuff. Very good. Also, it ends with a joke. (via Alan Connor)
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Are you listening, Steve Jobs? « BirdAbroad
Wow - almost entirely convincing fake Apple Stores in China. So convincing (unless you’re a bit too obsessed with Apple’s typography etc) even the employees think they work for Apple. (via Haddock)
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Pelme/django-compress - GitHub
Looks good: a tool for automatically (or only when asked) compressing and combining CSS and JavaScript files used on a Django project.
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Personal Archiving - Digital Preservation (Library of Congress)
A rough guide for individuals who want to archive their digital photos, email, social media, etc. Doesn’t mention file formats at all. Maybe that’s not as important as doing this at all? (via Digital Beyond)
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Smithsonian Institution Archives - Digitization Standards for Images
The Smithsonian’s rough guide for scanning and archiving photos. (via Digital Beyond)
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The Grand Rapids LipDub (New World Record) - YouTube
I’ve watched this through twice now. It’s so happy-making and nicely done. (via Kottke)