Just as so much Blair era culture-page handwringing about why my kids came back from university, in hindsight, was a way of not talking about wages, student debt, and housing, people tend to lose sight of the central role of politics when they make arguments about “filter bubbles”. The original post over at Flipchart Fairytales…
Read More Boundaries. Now there’s dull for youIn the light of this it’s fairly clear that open data as a project is now over. (Hey, it was the week it turned out the government wants to just throw away the Forensic Science Service’s archive, you know, just hire a skip because who wants a load of old stuff, right?) Tory plans seem…
Read More the Conservatives really do hate you as much as you fearedThe Grauniad Dabatlog has produced a rather fancy network visualisation of the sources cited in Anders Behring Breivik’s personal manifesto/horse-shit compendium. This is great as I now don’t need to worry that I perhaps should have made one. It’s very pretty and you can click on stuff, and see that some of the sources are…
Read More discovering the axis of barkingDid anyone notice that Liam Fox had an audience of Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, or I suppose they of him although you know how these things work around here, some time this spring? It’s in the latest MOD meetings disclosure, which runs up to March 2011. MOD is probably the most assiduous department for…
Read More all is right with the worldChina’s neo-con blogging fever-swamp, via (of course) Jamie K. For instance, Gao Yi, a well-known music critic, tweeted: “Compared with a war, US$7 billion is much more worthwhile. Right now, we lack the off-shore staging capacity for a mid-intensity war. A well-known music critic? Now that’s special. You don’t get detailed comment on the Royal…
Read More as for the Mahler, I think it could do with a helipadThis is fascinating, especially when you remember GTech’s role in our own dear sordid raffle. Great reporting, too.
Read More it could be you, but not while she’s aroundThis Melanie Phillips piece is remarkably insightful.
Read More various official agencies knew about the usual lobotomised pc crowdTanya Gold brings the fisk to A4E: Why does this feel so dodgy? I called Harrison’s PR and asked her what will happen if there are no jobs. What then? “Emma believes there are jobs,” she replied. “There are hidden jobs.” Oh yes, those hidden jobs, buried under trees and lying at the end of…
Read More Read, mark, learn and inwardly digestJamie Zawinski and Charlie Stross pitch in to the poisonous row about Google + and its “real names policy”. Now G+ seemed like a good idea to me because of this instant-classic paper, which demonstrated that a) people hate creepy targeted-advertising schemes even if you pay them to put up with it, b) we manage…
Read More A little story about Google MailI bet you thought I was kidding. But try this lede: Taped to the inside of a Sainsbury’s window in King’s Lynn, a printout of a map reminds teenagers of the town’s restrictions. Next to it, a notice on Norfolk Constabulary headed paper spells out the terms of a dispersal order: within the marked area,…
Read More exclusion zone