The Blog
07 Feb 2013  Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (2011), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 352 pages[from: Librarything] [ 07-Feb-13 4:40pm ] [ 07-Feb-13 4:38pm ] [ 07-Feb-13 4:37pm ] [ 07-Feb-13 4:37pm ] 04 Feb 2013 http://www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/features/news-j-pop-scandal-minami-minegishi-shaves-head.html
Quoting: A 20-YEAR-OLD singer from Japan sparked controversy over J-Pop sexual politics when she shaved her head for a YouTube video this weekend. Minami Minegishi -- a star of the multi-million-selling J-Pop girl group AKB48 -- appeared teary in a video in which she apologised for breaking the group's 'bushido' code whereby members are sworn to celibacy. AKB48 is, in fact, an 88-strong collective numbering girls as young as 13 in its ranks, The band's creator, Yasushi Akomoto, was quick to fend off accusations of hypocrisy. Because in spite of the fact his franchise grossed an estimated $212 million in 2011 alone, Akomoto, it turns out, is simply a social realist interested in reflecting the lives and moral dilemmas of Japan's horny young populace: "For example, there's a song called 'Despised Love'. This song is asking why junior high school kids kill themselves... unless I take up the issues these girls are facing as a songwriter the issues won't get addressed. It's an endless source of fodder to fill magazines and now they have one that went all Britney, end-quoting: Pure Bruce Sterling - Zeitgeist and it's protagonist, Leggy Starlitz http://www.amazon.com/Zeitgeist-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553576410 but with more Japanese craziness and classic Japanese "schoolgirl" teenage paedophilia. But then is it paedophilia if both the stars and the audience are under 16. While the management are taking advantage of them with everyone's consent.   News: J-Pop Scandal | The Stool Pigeon »20-year-old pop star humiliated for having sex with boyfriend, shaves head in penance [from: Google+ Posts] 03 Feb 2013 I've never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive. And the dangers of design by trial and error during live testing.
  Interplanetary Cessna »Answering your hypothetical questions with physics, every Tuesday. New: @whatifnumbers, a Twitter feed of numbers I find while answering questions. Prev · Interplanetary Cessna. What would happen if y... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 03-Feb-13 8:21am ] 29 Jan 2013 So farewell then http://www.ecademy.com
There is a certain relief that my horrible code and much hacked Drupal V3 has now disappeared and is no longer live. That was, err, ahem, 10 years.  The Business Social Network | SunZu - The Art of Business »Connect with 600,000+ business professionals. Join SunZu for online business networking, events, business blogging & networking groups. Previously Ecademy. [from: Google+ Posts] [ 29-Jan-13 1:47pm ] 28 Jan 2013 http://boingboing.net/2013/01/28/the-kraken-awakes-what-ar.html
Not to worry you or anything, but, O'Shea has found plastic in the stomachs of giant squid. "The oceans are very sick," he says. "The predictions that I have, in terms of published reviews, maintain that we will see the collapse of all commercial fisheries by 2025. Any fish that you're getting on your plate when you go down to the supermarket will be gone by 2025," commercially extinct though not absolutely extinct. "It's going to be another 25, 30 years after 2025 before levels might have climbed up again to justify some sort of commercial fisheries. But during the intervening years, we'll have had to go for an alternative food source and I don't think that people are going to be so interested in completely annihilating the oceans all over again."  The Kraken Awakes: What Architeuthis is Trying to Tell Us - Boing Boing »Captured live on video in its deep-sea element, for the first time, the Kraken of tall tales and sea shanties--Architeuthis, the giant squid--is coming into sharp focus, a flesh-and-blood reality. But w... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 28-Jan-13 4:49pm ] 21 Jan 2013 [from: Google+ Posts] 20 Jan 2013 Mega
https://mega.co.nz Nice clean interface. But I have a file transfer queued up that is just sitting there in pending. Presumably this is just due to heavy load in the first few hours after the launch.  [from: Google+ Posts] 19 Jan 2013 Ooops. http://mega.co.nz (currently redirects to http://kim.com/mega/) seems to be struggling under the load. So is the New MEGA up against dropbox or zippyshare/ifolder/rusfolder?
[from: Google+ Posts] [ 19-Jan-13 4:00pm ] Bleep's 4th 100 tracks compilation
Wow! https://bleep.com/stream/100+tracks+2012 That's a seriously impressive trawl through the last 18 months of UK Bass (or whatever it's called).   100 Tracks 2012 »The fourth annual top 100 tracks, selected by Bleep staff. Featuring over 9 hours of music by the best independent labels and artists that we work with. Available for a limited time only. [from: Google+ Posts] [ 19-Jan-13 9:12am ] 18 Jan 2013 It's Friday night. There's snow on the ground and it's cold so I'm definitely not going anywhere. It's getting near cocktail time. So what cocktail should I make for myself?
[from: Google+ Posts] [ 18-Jan-13 5:11pm ] 16 Jan 2013 So farewell then, Last.fm's free streaming radio.
Free web radio and subscription only desktop, phone and API radio. United Kingdom, United States, Germany. Subscription only radio, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil. Everyone else, nothing. http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/2197072/1 Over the years, I've helped hack away at lastfmproxy http://www.last.fm/group/LastFMProxy which was a bit of python code that turned last.fm radio into a shoutcast stream that could be played in things like winamp. The original author gave up because his country was excluded. Now I can't use it either as it relies on the radio APIs and so is subscription only if it can be made to work at all. This all makes me a bit sad, but then CBS can't seem to be able to work out what to do with last.fm even as we're told that the future of music is streaming services like Spotify, RDio, Pandora and Grooveshark.   Site release 12/12/12: Radio changes to Last.fm from 15 Jan 2013 - Feedback and Ideas - Last.fm »The world's largest online music catalogue, powered by your scrobbles. Videos, photos, stats, charts, biographies and concerts. [from: Google+ Posts] [ 16-Jan-13 5:34pm ] dlvr.it -> G+ Pages
dlvr.it will now auto-post from feeds to G+ pages. For money, as it only works for the moment on paid plans. Not sure what I think about this at all, at all. I've been using dlvr.it for quite a while to auto-post from G+ to Twitter and Facebook. Presumably this means that G+ has a write API but it's only enabled for API keys used by their select partners. Given that it's paid plans only, the downside is that it's likely only to be used by commercial interests. And note it's to pages not to an individual's profile posts. http://support.dlvr.it/entries/22900673-dlvr-it-now-supports-posting-to-google-pages   now supports posting to Google+ Pages! »Starting today dlvr.it users can now post content to Google+ Pages.In addition to posting social content to Google+, dlvr.it users can also monitor and manage... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 16-Jan-13 8:35am ] 15 Jan 2013 What would you do if Facebook banned you?
Spend a couple of minutes to think about all the implications of Facebook banning you. Not just the obvious bits in your facebook account but what about comments and authentication on 3rd party websites. http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/01/15/what-happened-when-facebook-disabled-my-account/ Now ask the same question about your Google account. It's ok though, it'll never happen to you, right?   What happened when Facebook disabled my account »Editor's note: This is a guest post by Chris Leydon, a freelance videographer and former startup founder. He organises the Tomorrow's Web series of meetups and documents London's tech ... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 15-Jan-13 5:28pm ] 14 Jan 2013 A lost decade hidden in plain sight?
http://boingboing.net/2013/01/13/19a0s-collection-on-pinterest.html Oh, my! This is rich in post-punk, retromania, hauntology, New Aesthetic. Simon Reynolds and James Bridle should be all over this. I'm not sure we give enough credit to the particular 5 years of change between 1978 and 1983. ISTM they were at least as significant as 1965- 1969. And like that period in the late 60s there was enough happening to fill 15 normal years. I can't help thinking though that this is the thinking of a person of a certain age, born approximately 1955-58. 1978-1983 would have been when they were waking up and consuming large quantities of memetic artifacts before settling down into being a more responsible member of society. Ignore my first para, it just feels like that was a significant period because it was personally significant to people who were in their early 20s att that time. "The propagation of historical information through memetic artifacts", indeed! "The propagation of historical information through memetic artifacts", indeed! Is this "A New Retro" or an Alternate "Retro-futurism"? Whatever it is, bring it back. http://pinterest.com/kurtwurk/19a0-s/ http://boingboing.net/2011/10/11/mixtape-of-the-lost-decade.html Can we say the same about 2008->2013? ps. talking about myself again, innit.  19A0s collection on Pinterest »Kurt Wurk has collected a number of images from the lost decade. [Pinterest] [from: Google+ Posts] [ 14-Jan-13 8:31am ] 13 Jan 2013 Ok. The article's good, and it's a good argument for automating and mechanising every aspect of the production of quality goods in order to remove the possibility of error. But, first,
We are not simply hedonic machines who thrive if supplied with things that tick certain boxes for sensory pleasure, aesthetic merit, and so on. and second, look at every object in the header graphic. Every last one is perfect and a perfect example of Northern Italian style. Can we reduce all those to it's perfect expression via a similar level of podule automation? http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/julian-baggini-coffee-artisans/ via http://new-aesthetic.tumblr.com/ where apparently Nespresso is another example of "The New Aesthetic". Little known fact from the article. Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck restaurant serves Nespresso coffee after the meal. Really? Hasn't Heston worked out how to deconstruct and then recreate the perfect coffee experience?   Julian Baggini - The art of coffee »Even the finest restaurants are serving coffee made with capsules. Have we completely lost faith in the human touch? [from: Google+ Posts] [ 13-Jan-13 4:31pm ] The Metamodernist Manifesto
"We recognise oscillation to be the natural order of the world." Jokez! That should be "Metamodernista", surely? http://www.metamodernism.org/ via http://www.scoop.it/t/hauntology   Metamodernist // Manifesto »We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage. Thus, metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition that lies between, beyond and in pursuit of a plurality of dispa... [from: Google+ Posts] [ 13-Jan-13 4:19pm ] #8BitLane
Marketing meets New Aesthetic meets Retromania. If it included the ghosts from PacMan would that make it hauntological as well? http://www.computerarts.co.uk/blog/8-bit-lane-street-transformed-arcade-game-133578 https://www.google.com/search?q=%238BitLane http://new-aesthetic.tumblr.com http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk http://scoop.it/t/hauntology   8 Bit Lane: street transformed into arcade game | Blog | Computer Arts magazine »To celebrate the release of new movie Wreck-It Ralph, Disney have transformed an east London street into an old school computer game [from: Google+ Posts] 
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Viking Adult (2012), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 448 pages
Atlantic Books (2012), Hardcover
McSweeney's (2012), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 352 pages