It’s Day 25 of Stilgherrian’s coronavirus isolation. A trip down to Sydney on Friday provided some relief, but also a reminder of how bleak everything is becoming.
Continue reading “The 9pm His Plague Diary 5”The 9pm His Plague Diary 5
The 9pm Caltrain
The sharing economy explained in just two minutes. A Florida meth lab is a threat to dolphins. And the failure of hashtag diplomacy.
This episode of The 9pm Edict heads to the United States, at least in some strange warped sense.
There’s a story of a meth lab in a Florida hotel room, and we encounter both an episode of Hannity on Fox News and a “sharing economy guru” on the BBC.
There’s also mention of Glassholes harassing a New York restaurant, a bread line in San Jose. and a plan to reverse the California Aqueduct.
Continue reading “The 9pm Caltrain”Instant Experts on Obama and the Nobel
I am now an expert on international politics and will pass judgement on and provide analysis of the Nobel Peace Prize going to Barack Obama, just like every other fuckhead.
It’s Swedish. And it’s glittery. Just like Abba. A “Black Abba”, if you wish. Afghanistan is Obama’s Waterloo. Discuss.
[This post is based on a couple of tweets from last night. 1, 2. Someone thought it was amusing. I wanted to link the word “Waterloo” to some explanatory material, but was stuck. Which link?]
Links for 22 September 2009 through 26 September 2009
Stilgherrian’s links for 22 September 2009 through 26 September 2009, gathered intermittently and posted with a lack of attention to detail:
- How Twitter works in theory | Epeus’ epigone: There is much in this commentary of Twitter which I support, particularly the concepts of flow and the overlapping social networks. Read and learn.
- Industry cooperation looming on filtering? | CommsDay: There have been rumours, from reliable sources, that Senator Conroy is hoping Australia’s Internet industry will come up with its own answer to censorship.
- Dear Associated Press: Come On, Attribution is Not That Hard | Whatever: John Scalzi is annoyed that AP cited him as “another user” on Twitter, when his name is just a click away. This fits with something I hinted at in Crikey this week. More about that another time.
- How journalists and media brands can get the maximum benefit from Twitter | Write, edit, blog: A nice collection of thoughts about… well, what the title says.
- Public Radio Exchange: “An online marketplace for distribution, review, and licensing of public radio programming.” Free registration means you can listen to this stuff yourself. Hours and hours of it.
- Programmatic specificity: what is Rudd talking about? | En Passant: An earlier essay, from July, with another take on Ruddspeak.
- Rudd's robust language is not the problem | Woolly Days: A nice analysis of why Prime Minister Kevin Rudd using the f-word really of little consequence, whereas bureaucratic evasiveness like “detailed programmatic specificity” is.
- Caring for Your Introvert | The Atlantic (March 2003): An oldie but a goodie. Kind of. If you’re an introvert, it might be worth showing this to those extroverts who are pissing you off.
- LIFE photo archive hosted by Google: All of the photos from LIFE magazine from 1936 to 1972 are on Google Images. This isn’t new — the archive was created in 2008 — but I was reminded of it this week.
- WP Greet Box WordPress Plugin | OMNINOGGIN: A different message is displayed to blog visitors, depending on how they found you. Do I have a use for this, or it it just another annoyance to maintain?
- Is the Internet melting our brains? | Salon Books: Despite the provocative headline, this interview with linguist Dennis Baron from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a sensible debunking of the fears.
- The Interregnum Revisited | Jon Taplin’ Blog: This essay deserves slow and careful reading. It links the themes of the cyclic nature of right-wing fear-mongering and paranoia with longer-term US political history — with some disturbing conclusions.
- Can Sheepdogs Round Up Magpies? | BitingTheDust: A great story from Robbo, currently in the Gibson Desert. And a great photo.
- MacSpeech Dictate 1.5: I’d been meaning to find decent dictation software for OS X, and John Birmingham mentioned this one. Must check it out.
- Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003 | WebSiteOptimization.com: Web pages now average more than 300KB and 50 objects per page. I know my own attitude has been that everyone now has broadband. But what about mobile devices and the Third World?
Fox News’ legacy to the world
Even though George W Bush’s presidency has more than 6 moths to run, Fox News has already started writing the hagiography. The Daily Show‘s John Oliver has responded.
If the video doesn’t work for you, go directly to part 1 and part 2. Hat-tip to Peter Black.