Migration Watch

Mark Steel : "Christmas must be fun for MigrationWatch"

New Momus Album

I can't decide if Momus is just getting more productive or if I'm slowing down in keeping up, as it were.

But there already seems to be a new Momus album out on YouTube.

As always, it's a mixed bunch. But some tracks I'm already liking very much.

The GhostBoxish Bathyscaphe  :




System of Usher :



The Brutalist :



Catholic App is a classic Momus twisted take, satirising the end of privacy.



I probably disapprove of Unreconstructed (after unwrapping its layers of irony) but it's musically and lyrically clever.



Spore is a salacious zero-g love-song with a luscious tune.



If Thunderclown was anything to go by, I'll probably get into the rest after a couple of listens too. Even at his most antipathic or discordantly "experimental"  Momus's songs are always wriggling with little earworms.

Saddam's Chemical Weapons

Status Report:

Saddam's Chemical Weapons :  Existed, sold to him by the US / European companies, covered up by Pentagon at the cost of their own soldier's health due to potential embarrassment.

My cynicism : Undiminished.

20 Years of Blogging

Dave Winer has a mixed mood contemplation of 20 years of blogging and his career.

It is a criminal waste that no institution is able to give him a context to do bigger work. Although perhaps he would end up being too constrained.  

Anyway, congratulations Dave. Happy 20th. And thank you. For the inspiration and everything you've contributed. I'm still using my software based on the Concord outliner every day. And I think more and more people are getting ready for the next reboot.

Britain's Independent Nuclear Deterrent

is ... er ... leased from the US.

Isabella Acevedo: the immigration minister's cleaner stuck in Yarl's Wood

Worth reading.

Champion of Democracy

Owen Jones :

Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive regimes on earth and bans political parties, trade unions and all forms of dissent; deprives women of many of their most basic rights; kills "witches"; has recently declared atheists to be terrorists; and persecutes LGBT people. It should surely be an ostracised regime. And yet this is the biggest market for British arms, with our government approving £1.6bn worth of exports, ranging from equipment for machine guns to "components for military equipment for initiating explosives."

Game Over

Leechblocked Quora

Had to be done ...

 

Cameron and Antibiotic Resistance

Cameron does something important and starts to look into the threat of antibiotic resistance.

But he puts an economist in charge of the project with an explicit assumption its an economic problem that industry has failed to invent more antibiotics.

So lets see if the committee starts recommending the banning of antibiotics in intensive farming practices or if they just come with recommendations to extend "intellectual property" rights or other incentives for big pharma companies.

Facebook Caught Experimenting on Users

Social Network Analysis research gets icky.

I have to admit that I see how this happened, and I would probably have signed off on the ethics of it myself (or been willing to be part of this). But I can see how it looks pretty bad to be caught doing it. And frankly, maybe it is pretty bad.

OTOH : I think what they found out knowledge worth having. But it's largely worth having in order to know the danger that corporations having this power present. You wouldn't want the academic study of this to be banned, and for the research to disappear into internal surreptitious tinkerings where no-one else ever sees the results except in private reports to the marketing department and advertisers.

PayPal Police

Do you have government permission for your privacy?.

Mimesis, Civilization and Collapse

A must-read article from The Archdruid. Fascinating and disturbing.
The Broken Thread of Culture

OneNote and Magic Pen

Microsoft seem to be doing something pretty cool here. Tight integration of a custom UI device (the stylus on their latest Surface tablets) with their note-taking app. OneNote.

Obviously I'm sticking with OWL, but this is pretty nice. And you can imagine them taking it a lot further. Extra buttons on the pen. What about a chording-keyboard on a pen? Other apps. accessible through OneNote etc.

Quora's Misogyny Problem

Violet Blue has some extracts from a disturbing Question.

I notice she also has a book that looks interesting.

African Firm Sells Pepper-spray Bullet Firing Drones

Here it comes ...

Society of the Query Reader

My conversation with Aharon Amir on Search Art and the language of search is now published in the Society of the Query Reader.
Available as a PDF or other online formats linked from the page.

Patterning : Sacred Geometry

Facebook App. To Live Monitor Audio Through Your Phone

WTF? At this point the surveillance-industrial complex is just laughing at us. The US has done nothing to prevent the NSA demanding that Facebook etc. hand over user's data to it. Has done nothing to make it legal for Facebook to even tell its users if the NSA has demanded their data. And yet Facebook says "trust us, we'll only use an always-open mic channel on your person for good".
At this point it's just comical that they'd ask for this, and comical we'll accept it.
BTW: You can sign a petition if you think it will do any good.
PS : I'm glad I shut my Facebook account and don't use the app.

Patterning : Curvacious