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London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | November 15, 2019
[comics] The A.V. Club’s 25 best comics of the 2010s … Really interesting end-of-the-decade list highlighting how comics are changing. ‘Hark! A Vagrant: Long before Hamilton hit the scene, Hark! A Vagrant made funny, pop culture references to history cool. In the humor comic, based on historical events and famous works of fiction, creator Kate Beaton’s skill with pacing and sense of humor are excellent, and her ability to convey a lot of information in a single panel has made her work eminently meme-able. (You might recognize the final panel of her comic about the relationship between Edgar Alan Poe and Jules Verne.) A limited grayscale palette and sketchy lines give Beaton’s work a retro feel, and allows the facial expressions and ridiculous situations to be at the fore. It’s surprising that a comic about the history of murderous royals and rampant disease is laugh-out-loud funny, but Hark! A Vagrant really is just that good.’
November 14, 2019
[tv] The 5th Young One: Pay No Attention to the Girl Behind the Sofa … She was hidden in plain sight all along – How could we have missed the 5th Young One? ‘And yes, the 2012 YouTube video shows it: a fifth housemate appearing at least once in every episode of the entire first series. She never moves, she never speaks, you never see her face, and her presence is never acknowledged by any of the other characters, but she’s there.’
November 13, 2019
[scams] I was an astrologer – here’s how it really works, and why I had to stop … An insiders story about Astrology. ‘I also learned that intelligence and education do not protect against superstition. Many customers were stockbrokers, advertising executives or politicians, dealing with issues whose outcomes couldn’t be controlled. It’s uncertainty that drives people into woo, not stupidity, so I’m not surprised millennials are into astrology. They grew up with Harry Potter and graduated into a precarious economy, making them the ideal customers.’
November 12, 2019
[comics] And I’ll Look Down and Whisper… “OK Boomer” …
November 11, 2019
[xmas] And in the eleventh month… Diamond Geezer preaching about the early arrival of Christmas. ‘And the angel answered and said unto her, It’s never too soon to start buying seasonal provisions, which is why the shops are full of them already. An early start is important to allow poorer folk, like shepherds, a longer window to stock up on essential festive goods, like tubs of peanuts and chocolate Santas. Would you like a mince pie? The sell-by date is next week, so I need to finish off the packet before then.’
November 8, 2019
[politics] Man who spent all year mocking ‘virtue signallers’ pretty keen for you to notice his massive poppy … ‘Dave Williams, 48, has spent most of the year telling people that liberal virtue signallers are responsible for most of society’s ills, and that this ‘sickness’ has led to the erosion of societal values such as free speech and being able to blame immigrants for stuff. However, he insists that his massive poppy is not a signal of his virtues, and is, in fact, something very different.’
November 7, 2019
[blogs] The good internet is history… A look at the slow death of corporate blogging. ‘…there have been more obituaries. They’re still being written today about the ghost ship of Deadspin, a pristine example of what Gawker-founder Nick Denton once called “the good internet.” To read Will Leitch or Katie Baker or David Roth or any of the murderers’ row who’d cycled through there was to have an unmitigated experience of hope about what writing in the 21st century could be. It was a site that embraced the most maligned forms of internet writing (the listicle), as well as its most highly-regarded (the long read), and gave them energy in juxtaposition. What would it mean to acknowledge that sports are both bone-shakingly stupid and also the most important thing? Were these critics writing to you or talking to you? At what point did the jokes transmogrify into penetrating insights? When did this meandering conversation about memories of old baseball players turn into something poignant? And why would anybody have ever wanted this to stop?’
November 6, 2019
[politics] My life in the ethical wild west: our sketch writer on his three years of Brexit hell … John Crace on Brexit. ‘Then there was Chris Grayling, the transport secretary under May, who awarded a ferry contract to a company with no ferries and whose time as cabinet minister cost the country £3bn. We could have paid him £1bn to stay at home doing nothing and still had money left over to build two hospitals. There is Jacob Rees-Mogg, the idiot’s idea of a thinking man, and Mark Francois, the exploding molehill. And, of course, Nigel Farage, who has returned to the fray to lead the Brexiters Against Brexit 12-step group. Then there is Boris Johnson himself, a byword for untrustworthiness, duplicity and laziness who is now our prime minister. Some countries have all the luck.’
November 5, 2019
[crime] Inside the Phone Company Secretly Run By Drug Traffickers … A fascinating look at a company who sold encrypted phones to criminals. ‘For MPC, the process of setting up the devices was relatively simple: MPC would take a Google Nexus 5 or Nexus 5X Android phone, and then add its own security features and operating system, according to social media posts from MPC and a source with knowledge of the process. MPC then created the customer’s messaging accounts, added a data-only SIM card (which MPC paid about £20 a month for), and then sold the phone to the customer at £1,200. Six-month renewals cost £700, the source added. MPC only sold around 5,000 phones, the source said, but that still indicates the business netted the company some £6 million.’
November 4, 2019
[trump] Follow This Twitter Account… Pres. Supervillain (@PresVillain) … Red Skull and Trump mashed up.
November 1, 2019
[funny] I Am Just Trying to Have a Civil Online Conversation About Vampires … ‘My sympathies. I am sorry your sister had such a terrible experience. But she admits she’d invited him into her apartment before this, right?’
October 30, 2019
[morris] “The World Is, of Course, Insane”: An Interview with Errol Morris … The New Yorker interviews Errol Morris on Steve Bannon amongst other things.
Ed Gein was the famous “Psycho” killer, arrested in Plainfield, Wisconsin, in 1957. A kind of American fable, if you like, and I really, really wanted to meet Ed Gein. I remember lying to people about how I had met him, when I hadn’t. And then I thought to myself, why lie about meeting him when you can actually meet Ed Gein? October 29, 2019
[comics] Ed Brubaker Takes Criminals From Comic-Con To Amazon Prime … Ed Brubaker interview updating on recent work in TV and his comics with Sean Phillips. ‘I think there’s something very special about comic books, and the whole trek to the comic shop every week to see what’s out. I think everyone should put more effort into making the single issues less of just a chapter of a trade, you know? Make the comic itself something special. Then make the trade or hardback collection special too. They’re different formats, they each have advantages, but a lot of publishers single issues seem like afterthoughts lately. So I want to make sure our comics stand out from that, and are always worth your money. I take a great amount of pride in that, even though almost no one but me seems to care.’
October 28, 2019
[anime] The best 25(-ish) anime of all time … Mefi lists Glass Reflection’s Top 25-ish Recommended Anime.
October 25, 2019
[comics] Untold Constantine Tales … Steve Bissette on one of the inspirations for John Constantine. ‘We’ve always talked about the Police and Sting‘s role in Quadrophenia, the movie (1979), but it was indeed Sting‘s ominous presence and role in Richard Loncraine‘s theatrical film adaptation of Dennis Potter‘s Brimstone & Treacle (1982) that fueled those fires back in 1983-84 for us.’
October 24, 2019
[email] Was E-mail a Mistake? … A good look at synchronous Vs. asynchronous communications. ‘The dream of replacing the quick phone call with an even quicker e-mail message didn’t come to fruition; instead, what once could have been resolved in a few minutes on the phone now takes a dozen back-and-forth messages to sort out. With larger groups of people, this increased complexity becomes even more notable. Is an unresponsive colleague just delayed, or is she completely checked out? When has consensus been reached in a group e-mail exchange? Are you, the e-mail recipient, required to respond, or can you stay silent without holding up the decision-making process? Was your point properly understood, or do you now need to clarify with a follow-up message? Office workers pondering these puzzles—the real-life analogues of the theory of distributed systems—now dedicate an increasing amount of time to managing a growing number of never-ending interactions.’
October 23, 2019
[brexit] You could have had Brexit by now if you hadn’t been such d*cks about it … ‘You could have had it! All you had to do was stay in a customs union and you could have stopped immigration, which was all you cared about anyway. But no. Nobody had heard of bloody no-deal before last summer but suddenly that was all you wanted and nothing else would do and look where it’s got you. Now we’re at the point where you’ve got an actual Brexit deal actually passed and the first thing you do is stop everything because you’re not allowed to ram it through in three days. Seriously?’
October 21, 2019
October 18, 2019
[code] The lines of code that changed everything … A list of software that changed the world. ‘The Apollo 11 Lunar Module’s BAILOUT Code – The [Apollo Guidance Computer] software team knew there were eventualities they couldn’t plan for. So they created BAILOUT. When the computer was at risk of running out of space (or “overflow”), the AGC triggered BAILOUT to schedule less important data and operations so it could keep the vital ones up and running. As the Eagle lander descended toward the moon’s surface, at 30,000 feet the AGC flashed a “1202” alarm, which neither Neil Armstrong nor the flight controller in Houston immediately recognized. But in less than 30 seconds, the computer experts in Mission Control relayed that the AGC software was doing just what it was supposed to: drop lower-priority work and restart the important jobs (so quickly that it was imperceptible to the crew).’
October 17, 2019
[life] Escape rooms are very big business … A fascinating look at the world of Escape Rooms. ‘…Escape rooms are fundamentally odd. It is weird to gather in a themed room for an hour to unlock combination locks in a high-stakes situation that matters not at all. We didn’t use to trap ourselves in $30 rooms and now we do, and it doesn’t feel like an accident that the rise of escape rooms in the first half of this decade corresponds almost exactly with a seismic shift in how we relate to technology (intimately, all the time). Escape rooms are an antidote: They require you to exist, in real life, with other real-life people, in the same place, at the same time, manipulating tangible objects. But you only have to do it for an hour! High intensity, low commitment. You get the thrill of deep connection, but you don’t have to, like, talk about your feelings. Maybe we talk about feelings too much anyway. Maybe we should just do stuff. But who has time to do stuff?’
October 16, 2019
[columbo] My top 10 favourite Columbo episodes … ‘A typewriter pounds. A Mercedes cruises through the LA streets. A writer in a high-rise is lost in a world of his own invention. As the typewriter continues to pound the car parks in an empty lot, the driver steps out and slips a gun into his jacket. So begins one of the pivotal TV experiences of our time. From those first arresting moments, Murder by the Book grabs the viewer by the throat and never lets go. It’s still a cause of pride and joy for Columbo fans that a young Steven Spielberg was in the director’s chair for this. His touch and flair make this a visually unique outing, but he’s only one reason for its success. Peter Falk and Jack Cassidy establish an on-screen rapport that would enrich the series on three occasions, while Steven Bochco’s script and Blly Goldenberg’s score are world class. In short, it’s an A Grade cast and crew and they all bring their A Game to proceedings.’
October 15, 2019
October 14, 2019
[socialmedia] The machine always wins: what drives our addiction to social media … A Long Read on social media addiction. ‘Part of what keeps us hooked is the so-called variability of rewards: what the US computer scientist Jaron Lanier calls “carrot and shtick”. The Twittering Machine gives us both positive and negative reinforcements, and the unpredictable variation of its feedback is what makes it so compulsive. Like a mercurial lover, the machine keeps us needy and guessing; we can never be sure how to stay in its good graces. Indeed, the app manufacturers increasingly build in artificial-intelligence machine-learning systems so that they can learn from us how to randomise rewards and punishments more effectively. This sounds like an abusive relationship. Indeed, much as we describe relationships as having gone toxic, it is common to hear of “Twitter toxicity”. Toxicity is a useful starting point for understanding a machine that hooks us with unpleasure, because it indexes both the pleasure of intoxication and the danger of having too much.’
October 11, 2019
[unix] Ken Thompson’s Unix password … Cracking passwords from late 1970s. ‘However, kens password eluded my cracking endeavor. Even an exhaustive search over all lower-case letters and digits took several days (back in 2014) and yielded no result. Since the algorithm was developed by Ken Thompson and Robert Morris, I wondered what’s up there. I also realized, that, compared to other password hashing schemes (such as NTLM), crypt(3) turns out to be quite a bit slower to crack (and perhaps was also less optimized).Did he really use uppercase letters or even special chars? (A 7-bit exhaustive search would still take over 2 years on a modern GPU.)’
October 10, 2019
[drinks] How Fanta Was Created for Nazi Germany … The wartime origin of the soft drink Fanta. ‘The drink was technically fruit-flavored, but limited wartime resources made that descriptor not wholly accurate. Its ingredients were less than appetizing: leftover apple fibers, mash from cider presses, and whey, a cheese by-product. “[Fanta] was made from the leftovers of the leftovers,” says Mark Pendergrast, who, as the author of For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, revealed this hidden past.’
October 9, 2019
[tube] What’s the best connected Tube Station? … Diamond Geezer crunches the numbers. ‘Eight of these are on the Circle line and six are on the District line. Only one is on the Victoria line (because the Victoria line’s quite short and doesn’t have many stations). Mile End is the best connected tube station outside zone 1. Holborn is the best-connected tube station on only two lines. Slightly further down the list are Bank (top 20) and Monument (top 30). If you combined them to make one mega-station, it would connect to 162 other stations, which would would put Bank/Monument in second place. But Bank and Monument are officially two stations, according to TfL’s official data, so this doesn’t count.’
October 8, 2019
[mac] Thoughts on (and pics of) the original Macintosh User Manual … I never realised that the target market for the original Macintosh was Patrick Bateman. ‘Perhaps the strangest sentence: “The Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.”And the disk is a… guest? Someone looking for the bathroom?’
October 7, 2019
[comics] Alan Moore Episode / Neil Gaiman Episode … Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman have both been on BBC Radio 6 Music show Paperback Writers recently.
October 4, 2019
[aircrash] What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max … William Langewiesche on the downfall of Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft.
All signs are that the reintroduction of the 737 Max will be exceedingly difficult because of political and bureaucratic obstacles that are formidable and widespread. Who in a position of authority will say to the public that the airplane is safe? October 3, 2019
[life] List: Famous Philosophers’ Pick-Up Lines … from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. ‘Arthur Schopenhauer: “Life is nothing but a meaningless fluctuation between pain and boredom. And we are but worms. And our only chance of freedom is to embrace the dark nothingness that surrounds us. And to cast off the burdensome yoke of individualism. And to embrace the void. And to become one with the unyielding Will of the universe. Anyhoo… wanna smush?”’
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