February 2012
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Nightmares on Wax
— Thinking of Omara
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WatchNatureza Morta (‘still life’, and more literally, ‘dead nature’) – a small-scale video-mapping artwork by the São Paulo art collective BijaRi, projected in 3D onto a table containing paper weapons and a towel.
Part of Estado de Sitio (‘state of siege’), an exhibition at Choque Cultural art gallery, opening today and running till the end of March 2012.
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'There is no such thing as a political crime: it... →
The Recorder ‘There is no such thing as a political crime: it is either a crime or not a crime.’
Prisoner ‘I am aware that that has been argued in the Courts, but custom has now proved that that is wrong. For instance, there are the cases of O’Brien, Cobbett, and Dr. Jameson… Technically, of course, I suppose I must be judged to be guilty, but morally I am not guilty;...
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The Smiths
— I won’t share you
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You will never kill piracy, and piracy will never... →
Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it’s worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won.
It can’t, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling …
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Many Mail Online readers leapt from the tyres they...
“Once you’ve clambered over the broken grammar, deliberately placed at the start of the sentence like a rudimentary barricade of piled-up chairs, there’s a tragic conundrum at work here.”
Charlie Brooker in the Guardian, writing about the bumper crop of comments on a Mail Online article, ‘Rightwingers are less intelligent than left wingers’.
There was a...
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Jeff Briton
— Rub out
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“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing,...”
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Wislawa Szymborska, 'Mozart of poetry', dies aged...
The Polish president joins tributes to Nobel prize-winner, calling her the country’s ‘guardian spirit’ –
See the Guardian obituary; and this poem, posted in the Comments:
On Death, without Exaggeration
It can’t take a joke, find a star, make a bridge. It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming, building ships, or baking cakes.
In our planning for tomorrow, it...
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Cowboy Junkies
— Murder, tonight, in the trailer...
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January 2012
39 posts
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John Lanchester on financial crisis
Published in the London Review of Books, Lanchester’s is some of the best, most memorable writing you can get on the origins and meaning of the world financial crisis and the City of London financial district.
Cityphilia (January 2008)
Cityphobia (October 2008)
John Lanchester has also published a book on the crisis — Whoops!
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Bomba Estereo
— Fuego
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How to make a solar water heater from plastic... →
Retired Brazilian mechanic José Alano invented a simple, cheap, energy saving rooftop solar water heater which is benefiting thousands of people. Here’s how it’s done …
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Europe: who lives where – map →
An interactive map that shows how many foreign Europeans are currently living in other European countries (the figures reflect only the officially resident).
More than half a million Poles live in the UK, and almost the same number again in Germany. Germany also has 556,000 Italians living there. There are 391,000 Britons in Spain, and more Germans than I imagined living in the UK – nearly...
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Klaxons
— Golden skans
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“I have often have wondered what kind of a person I would be today if I did not...”
– — Elizabeth Taylor.
via Miss Ava Gardner
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Sunday = backup day
Just backed up my Tumblr. If you want to back up yours, you can download a little app from the Tumblr blog, and it’s very straightforward. Note that although it doesn’t say so in the FAQs, it won’t work if there are any posts queued in your Tumblr. Other than that, it seems to have worked well.
I don’t know if it’s possible to restore from this if the worst happened,...
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Lissy Trullie
— Madeleine (Selebrities remix)
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Has Microsoft Word affected the way we work?
‘But has word processing changed the way we write? … The most interesting academic study I looked at found that writers using computers “spent more time on a first draft and less on finalising a text, pursued a more fragmentary writing process, tended to revise more extensively at the beginning of the writing process, attended more to lower linguistic levels [letter, word] and formal...
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John le Carré in 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'
John le Carré’s cameo in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (at 1:15:55, approx; via deareje). I love John le Carré’s books more than almost any other author’s – he’s in my top three writers of great, great reads.
I didn’t spot this cameo in the film tonight (at Reserva Cultural, Avenida Paulista, São Paulo), but I saw him – ‘Christmas party guest’ – in the credits....
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Who Are These People? →
To mark the 5th anniversary of the iPhone, an excerpt from Mike Daisey’s one-man show wherein Daisey - performer, investigative journalist and “worshipper in the cult of Apple” - began to wonder “where all our crap comes from,” and travelled to the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China to talk to workers and find out. A great piece from Ira Glass’ This American...