• New Statesman – Watching the Arctic melt, I realise apathy must be frozen out- The greatest threat to the future of humanity is now not political brinkmanship, but paranoid indifference: the certainty that the future is both finite and short and that all we can do is burn what little of the remaining money we have and hope civilisation outlasts us.This is a terribly foolish way to live. The anarchist thinker David Graeber writes in Debt: the First 5,000 Years that in response to the blinding obviousness of economic and ecological world buggeration, “the most common reaction – even from those who call themselves ‘progressives’ – is simply fear. We can no longer imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even worse.” Graeber adds: “About the only thing we can imagine is catastrophe.”
  Tags: climatechange environment futurism activism
• Yahoo! YSlow for Chrome – YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages.
  Tags: web tools useful wordpress
• Fright Night (2011) – Even The Straight Boys are Queer « Ruthless Culture – By confusion the mainstream with the marginal and the queer with the straight, Fright Night communicates a profound cultural uncertainty about maturity; what does it mean to be a grown-up? What does it mean to be a man? According to Fright Night, we are nowhere near to having clear answers to either of these questions.
  Tags: teenagers queer cinema vampires adolescence comingofage malesexuality
• Science In My Fiction » Blog Archive » “Are We Not (as Good as) Men?” – Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Hollywood, hard science, uplift, and a lack of female characters. Sounds like an SF review of an SF movie!
  Tags: sciencefiction sf film uplift
• Astrogator’s Logs » Blog Archive » Snachismo, or: What Do Women Want? – About thirty years and fifty men later (counting short-term encounters), I think I’m finally ready to answer Freud’s burning question: What Do Women Want? I do not purport to answer on behalf of my entire gender. But I can unequivocally say what I want in my men and to put it in a soundbite, the answer is: Snachismo.
  Tags: gender sex relationships funny interesting machismo snachismo
• Science In My Fiction » Blog Archive » To the Hard Members of the Truthy SF Club – Being a research scientist as well as a writer, reader and reviewer of popular science and speculative fiction, I’ve frequently bumped up against the fraught question of what constitutes “hard” SF. It appears regularly on online discussions, often coupled with lamentations over the “softening” of the genre that conflate the upper and lower heads.
  Tags: sciencefiction hardsf science sciency ish
• 8 Simple Questions You Won’t Believe Science Can’t Answer | Cracked.com – The field of science is capable of some amazing things, mostly because it’s filled with all the Albert Einsteins and Doogie Howsers the world has produced over the centuries. But it may shock you that some of the most mundane, everyday concepts are as big a mystery to scientists as they are to the average toddler.
  Tags: science amusing interesting
• To My Someday Daughter, by Geordie Tait – a Magic: the Gathering Miscellaneous Article – “This letter is mostly about some stuff that happened recently, but it’s also about me, your dad, and how I’ve changed as a person over the years. It’s an open letter, so I’m going to let all my friends read it, too. By the end of it, some will be mad at me, perturbed and energy-sapped because I’ve made them feel guilty and asked them to question things that seem natural to them. Some will dismiss me, too entrenched in the perceived righteousness of their ways. They will tell themselves that I am expressing a progressive viewpoint for the express purpose of ruining their fun.” Fucking fantastic.
  Tags: feminism sexism misogyny respect understanding beingadecenthumanfuckingbeing
• Playing God « Second Person Shooter – When I grew up, some games were off-limits. Diablo was a no, because Satan was right there in the title. Grand Theft Auto was also disallowed when my parents caught me mowing down police officers and lines of Elvis impersonators with a machine gun. Mortal Kombat was banned for obvious reasons—you can rip out a man’s ribs and them stab them through his eyes—but even Golden Eye was mysteriously “lost” one day after a particularly hilarious match of only shooting each other in the knee caps. I can understand the logic behind all of these decisions, but I’ve always been confused about why I wasn’t allowed to play The Sims.
  Tags: gaming personal religion anxiety escapism faith
• Autonomism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – Autonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. As an identifiable theoretical system it first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist (operaismo) communism. Later, post-Marxist and anarchist tendencies became significant after influence from the Situationists, the failure of Italian far-left movements in the 1970s, and the emergence of a number of important theorists including Antonio Negri, who had contributed to the 1969 founding of Potere Operaio, Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno, etc. It influenced the German and Dutch Autonomen, the worldwide social centre movement, and today is influential in Italy, France, and to a lesser extent the English-speaking countries. Those who describe themselves as autonomists now vary from Marxists to post-structuralists and anarchists.
  Tags: politicaltheory autonomy socialism anarchism

• LENIN’S TOMB: Still blaming Muslims – Anders Breivik, though not a Third Reich enthusiast, is obviously a fascist of some description.  His manifesto, his activism and his links to the UK far right scene, talked down by the Norwegian police, are evidence that he didn’t seek to be simply a lone ranger.  He has made it clear that his massacres were an attack on the political system, and he clearly intended that they should be followed by others.  But the ideas that led him to fascism are not at all marginal.  The Islamophobia that has been energetically disseminated by the belligerents of the ‘war on terror’, the view seriously entertained by many that Europe’s Muslim minority constitutes a threat meriting legal supervision and restriction at the very least, has provided the intellectual and moral basis for the mass murder of Norwegian children.  No one who is not prepared to countenance this can have anything morally serious or even creditable to say about this slaughter.
  Tags: norway murder farright fascism islamophobia europe
• Former News Corp. Executives Dispute James Murdoch’s Testimony – NYTimes.com – LONDON — Two former News International executives publicly contradicted James Murdoch’s testimony to a parliamentary committee, saying Thursday that they told him of evidence in 2008 that suggested that phone hacking at one of the company’s tabloid newspapers was more widespread.
  Tags: newsinternational media journalism corporatism capitalism
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) – The Ambivalence of the Metallic Sublime « Ruthless Culture – Indeed, for all of their artistic accomplishment and mad experimental brilliance, Bay’s films encourage us to find the sublime in images of racism, sexism, nationalism and violence. Combine this with the fact that Bay’s experimentation is prompted by the desire to make more and more money for multinational corporations and you have a recipe for a distinctly unpleasant viewing experience.
  Tags: michaelbay film cinema transformers experimental
• Hot Water Music “The Fire, The Steel, The Tread” by Reybee on SoundCloud – New HWM tune.
  Tags: band music
• Weakness, the Catalyst of Survival | Nightmare Mode – Gamers need to know what it’s like to be weak because it’s in times of hopelessness and darkness that people have struggled and overcome adversity. The whole point of introducing peril, fear and weakness in games is so that players may overcome them through their own ability, simultaneously improving their skills and building the good kind of confidence, the kind that is aware of its faults but overcomes them, instead of the kind that thinks it’s invincible and invulnerable.
  Tags: gamedesign weakness strength fear
• Unite launches cut price membership for students and the unemployed | Politics | The Guardian – Britain’s largest trade union, Unite, is launching cut-price memberships for students and the unemployed as it attempts to boost its ranks and counter David Cameron’s “big society”.
  Unite will offer students, single parents and the jobless 50p per week “community memberships” as it focuses on neighbourhoods as well as workplaces. Trade unions are battling falling membership numbers and government spending cuts that will put their finances under further threat by eliminating public sector jobs – their most fertile recruiting ground.
  Tags: unions britain recession anti-cuts
• For News Corporation, Troubles That Money Can’t Dispel – NYTimes.com – Time and again in the United States and elsewhere, Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation has used blunt force spending to skate past judgment, agreeing to payments to settle legal cases and, undoubtedly more important, silence its critics. In the case of News America Marketing, its obscure but profitable in-store and newspaper insert marketing business, the News Corporation has paid out about $655 million to make embarrassing charges of corporate espionage and anticompetitive behavior go away.
  Tags: newsinternational media corporatism crookedcapitalistscum corruption bribery espionage
• The rape of men | Global development | The Observer – Sexual violence is one of the most horrific weapons of war, an instrument of terror used against women. Yet huge numbers of men are also victims. In this harrowing report, Will Storr travels to Uganda to meet traumatised survivors, and reveals how male rape is endemic in many of the world’s conflicts.
  Tags: war violence rape power africa gender

Del.icio.us links for May 9th through May 29th:

• SchNEWS 773 – 27th May 2011 – No Spain, No Gain – We’ve got the Arab Spring – what about a European summer? It’s a week since thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators pitched up in central Madrid (see SchNEWS 772) – and revolution fever is spreading across Europe like nits in a playground. With the Spanish sit-in still going strong – and intending to remain until at least the 29th – street demonstrations have also hit Greece, Georgia, and, er, Bristol. Protests are spreading to Italy, France, Portugal, Austria even German – could it be that last year’s initial protests against austerity measures are maturing, one year on, into a broader demand for political reform?
  Tags: democracy protest recession europe
• I live sweat… – “My gender role, as defined by me, is an equal one. I can do anything a man can and I can’t imagine it any other way.” – Lisa Garelick from Kind of Like Records on women in the independent music industry. – Some people may argue that more women aren’t involved behind the scenes because there aren’t a lot of women into the music or who go to shows. I’d cite the bigger shows (Bouncing Souls, whatever passes as The Misfits these days) as a prime example where I’d look out at a vast crowd and see an even ratio of men to women scattered throughout. A few days later, I’d go to a DIY basement show and see those numbers tip drastically. I’d be one of three girls in the room and I would be so upset. Why was it that the other girls didn’t want to be a part of this? Was it me? Was it them? What was the problem?
  Tags: punk feminism empowerment diy
• 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor | Cracked.com – Cracked comedy, obv., but also a fair few reasons why being poor isn’t just a case of inadequate bootstrapping.
  Tags: poverty economics classwar richpoordisparity usa
• Kill Screen – From Chalks to Blocks: Minecraft in the Classroom – Joel Levin plays Minecraft. That would be an unremarkable fact, considering that he’s one of about two million people that play the indie sandbox game. But instead of constructing 1:1 replicas of the Starship Enterprise or functioning 16-bit computers, Joel has crafted an entire class curriculum in and around a Minecraft world. Levin documents his radical approach to teaching computer literacy at a private school at The Minecraft Teacher.
  Tags: minecraft education learning children
• LENIN’S TOMB: The Tories and (the ideology of) crime – The Tories, we know, are the party of order. They stand for decent, law-abiding tax-payers, and would like a little less solicitousness toward the criminals if you don’t mind. But not these days – or at least not at this precise moment, for our affairs are highly volatile. The Tories are allowing themselves to be out-flanked to their right by Labour on this issue. How could this be?
  Tags: recession crime liberals racism reactionaries tories
• Counterpunch | MySpace – Glossy Chicago pop-punk.
  Tags: band music
• THE HUMAN PROJECT | MySpace – Leeds punk band with a good sense of fun.
  Tags: none
• RADICUS | MySpace – Awesome Peterborough punk group, could be ones to watch!
  Tags: band music
• YouTube – Fucked Up – “David Comes To Life” – Trailer for Fucked Up’s forthcoming concept album.
  Tags: band music video
• Darko – Sweet throaty UK punk band.
  Tags: band music
• Laughing in the Face of – Birmingham punk on Lockjaw records.
  Tags: band music
• TURN AND RUN | MySpace – Another Peterborough hardcore band.
  Tags: band music
• WE ARE FICTION | MySpace – Peterborough rock band.
  Tags: band music
• WITHOUT FIRE | MySpace – UK pop punk band.
  Tags: band music
• The Spanish Tahrir – There is no doubt that Sunday 15thMay 2011 has come to mark a turning point: from the web to the street, from conversations around the kitchen table to mass mobilisations, but more than anything else, from outrage to hope. Tens of thousands of people, ordinary citizens responding to a call that started and spread on the internet, have taken the streets with a clear and promising demand: they want a real democracy, a democracy no longer tailored to the greed of the few, but to the needs of the people. They have been unequivocal in their denunciation of a political class that, since the beginning of the crisis, has run the country by turning away from them and obeying the dictates of the euphemistically called “markets”.
  Tags: spain protest cuts recession europe resistance directaction occupation
• The Bakersfield Sound | Music | Gateways To Geekery | The A.V. Club – Country music conjures up an unfortunate set of imagery for many: pick-up trucks, Confederate flags, mullets, and tallboys of Bud Lite for starters. The intelligentsia has historically found the genre easy and fun to ridicule, dismissing it as the soundtrack of ignorance—hillbilly idiocy in musical form. Country can be a daunting field for neophytes to get into because it brings so much cultural baggage with it, most of it negative, and because the homogeneous pabulum you hear on contemporary country radio doesn’t provide much incentive to go beyond the stereotypes or preconceptions.
  Tags: music country history
• War is Over Article | Eurogamer.net – Towards the end of this year, the PlayStation 3 will celebrate its fifth birthday, with the Xbox 360 blowing out six candles on its cake about a week later. By this stage in the lifespans of their predecessors, these consoles would already be well on the road to replacement – five years after the launch of PlayStation 2, Sony was talking openly about the PS3, while five years after the launch of Xbox, Xbox 360 was already on shelves.
  Tags: gaming hardware consoles
• Public sector pay – the myths exposed | Richard Seymour | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk – According to a Policy Exchange report highlighted by the Telegraph, public sector workers are 40% better off than their private sector counterparts, if wages are taken on an hourly basis and pensions are included. This is a longstanding claim on the right, used to justify attacks on public sector pay and pensions. The problem is that neither the numbers, nor the narrative, are on the level.
  Tags: economics rightwingbullshit mythbusting pay employment
• Fucked Up for Spin – Drawing of Fucked Up for Spin magazine… totally awesome.
  Tags: band artwork fuckedup system:filetype:jpg system:media:image
• Punchbag Artists | Resolution Magazine – Now it’s no big surprise that on the internet anyone can be a critic. While professional reviews can be brutal and punishing, down at the anonymous, anarchic end of the scale, criticism can mutate into public humiliation and denouncement of not just a game but also its architects. APB is not an isolated case. Zombie Cow’s Privates is a “game for perverts”. Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV is a “faux 8-bit piece of crap.” 2K Marin’s in-development XCOM is “like wanting a puppy for your birthday but getting dogshit.”
  But what does this do to the developers on the receiving end?
  Tags: angryinternetmen criticism gamesjournalism
• Amateur Dramatics « Electron Dance – The audience of our game theatre, though, is not the same as that of literature and film. They are a vital piece of the theatrical puzzle, the ones who get to play the lead in the drama. The problem is that every player is different. We each have a different twist to our imagination, a different fantasy to fulfil.
  Tags: gaming videogames playeragency immersion
• I live sweat… – “…we fall woefully short in practice.” – Aaron Scott, aka. Attica! Attica!, on punk, sexism, and how men can help. – I am a straight male who loves punk music. By pure chance of my sexuality and gender, I am a person of immense privilege. I am also a member of the demographic that comprises the majority of the punk scene. I’m writing this in the hope that fellow members of our demographic will take a deeper consideration of our role in sexism within the scene. While we supposedly value ideals of inclusiveness and egalitarianism, we fall woefully short in practice. And we, as males who love punk music, can and should take an active part in dismantling sexist norms and coming closer to realizing those ideals.
  Tags: sexism punk maleprivilege
• I live sweat… – “I didn’t want to be the weird muslim kid, I wanted to be the weird punk kid.” Donna Ramone on Islamophobia in punk. – I didn’t want to be the weird muslim kid, I wanted to be the weird punk kid.
  Tags: muslims punk racism
• Screen Machine – “According to a lot of film writers Scott Pilgrim was made for one or all of the following - gamers, comic book fans but, worst of all, for misogynistic (if geekier inclined) males. The misogynistic tag is what troubled me the most because even though I call myself a feminist – I really liked Scott Pilgrim a lot. I loved the pacing, the gags and thought the soundtrack was stellar. So I had another look.” Good review looking back over the accusations of sexism & MPDG-ism in SPvTW.
  Tags: review criticism sexism feminism scottpilgrim
• YouTube – Tropes vs. Women: #1 The Manic Pixie Dream Girl – Good video on the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ cliche.
  Tags: film cinema writing characters cliches feminism
• China Miéville leads radical SF’s invasion of the mainstream – The radicalism inherent in the best science fiction is at the heart of Miéville’s work, and makes it perfect reading for our troubled times
  Tags: chinamieville sf fantasy radicalism
• Apple’s Chinese workers treated ‘inhumanely, like machines’ – An investigation into the conditions of Chinese workers has revealed the shocking human cost of producing the must-have Apple iPhones and iPads that are now ubiquitous in the west.
  Tags: technology capitalism manufacturing offshoring employment
• Were the Anti Iraq War Demonstrations of 2003 Too Good to Be True? by Paul Street | ZSpace – The marches of March 2003 were organized as much by the televised images of the boorish Bush and his loathsome, transparently arch-authoritarian Vice President (Darth Cheney) and Defense Secretary (Donald Rumsfeld)as by any sophisticated, impressive, in-place, and battle-steeled peace movement. And, as I worried at the beginning, it was all too partisan and Democratic, insufficiently able and/or willing to grasp the imperial and militaristic nature of the Democratic Party in connection with the Iraq War and more broadly. It was opposed not to much to criminal militarism as such as to the clumsy and boorish, translucently blatant cowboy imperialism of a Texas Republican president, leaving one to suspect that many off its members would be far less likely to be hitting the streets if the wars they claimed to oppose were being conducted by supposedly kinder and gentler imperialists like Al Gore or John F “Reporting for Duty” Kerry.
  Tags: electoralpolitics reformism war antiwar protest usa democrats liberalism
• Unusual software bug – Wikipedia – Unusual software bugs are a class of software bugs that are considered exceptionally difficult to understand and repair. There are several kinds, mostly named after scientists who discovered counterintuitive things.
  Tags: software testing
• Defend The Right To Protest – Defend the Right to Protest was launched in response to violent police tactics and arrests at the student protests of November and December 2010, with the support of activists, MPs, trade unionists, student groups and others. We campaign against police brutality, kettling and the use of violence against those who have a right to protest. We campaign to defend all those protestors who have been arrested, bailed or charged and are fighting to clear their names.
  Tags: protest activism police britain justice

• Fucked Up – Ship of Fools by Consequence of Sound on SoundCloud – Create, record and share your sounds for free – 3rd song from Fucked Up’s forthcoming new record… stoked.
  Tags: band music
• Junior Battles – Idle Ages – June 28 on Paper + Plastick – New song from Junior Battles. New album in June…
  Tags: band music
• New Statesman – This England, 29.04.2011 – So this is England, on the 29th of April, 2011. The marriage of the heir to an archaic and largely powerless royal dynasty is celebrated with pomp and circumstance, whilst dissent of any kind is suppressed on the smallest pretext, or none. If you step outside the system, if you refuse to stand and shout hurrah, if you question the narrative of easy privilege, if you offer an alternative or try to live one, you are a dangerous freak and you will be punished. The poor get poorer. The rich get richer. And England Prevails.
  Tags: britain bread&circuses democracy police
• SchNEWS 769 – 29th April 2011 – Tes-Cop-Oly – Tesco have been the masters of this technique, championing the complete corporate takeover of their consumers lives – out to sell them their housing, everything they ever need to put in it, providing their recreation facilities, the financial services to afford it all and, of course, stuffing them full of crap food.
  And yet they are still upping the ante. To the above list you can now add paying for the means to keep everyone in their place on the Tesco-treadmill: As part of the bribe needed to secure the rights to build the biggest Tesco in the country in West Bromwich, the supermarket is not only building a cinema, restaurants, a hotel, a petrol station, shops and a new ring road but also, for the first time, a police station.
  Tags: police britain corporatism capitalism
• SchNEWS 769 – 29th April 2011 – Georgian Facade – “The not St George’s Day march by the not EDL was, for a family event, remarkably short of kids. A hilarious attempt to liberalise their image by carrying a rainbow flag foundered after the mob began chanting “You lot take it up the arse!” The march was interrupted by anti-fascist demonstrations throughout the day and the MFE didn’t quite get the stroll in the sunshine they may have been hoping for.” What was this, an attempt to regain face and antagonise Brighton after that abortive march last year? Sad fucking bastards.
  Tags: fascists britain edl brighton
• Monsters – DVD review for VideoVista – We are a supremely competent culture. With universities desperate for any revenue they can lay their hands on, the last quarter century has seen an explosion in the number of people attending graduate school, business school, art school and film school. Year after year, these institutions turn out eminently competent individuals who have learned the tricks of their trade whilst having little or no idea as to what to do with these tricks. Film schools in particular seem incredibly adept at producing filmmakers who know the vocabulary of film, and know how to put pretty images on the screen, but lack the sort of vision that makes for great cinema.
  Tags: film cinema review criticism education
• Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Who is the Most Deserving? – Yesterday and today, the Telegraph and the BBC carry yet another DWP story trumpeting the great “success” of Employment Support Allowance. They are delighted to announce that of 1,175,700 new claims since 2008 a massive 887,300 failed to qualify for assistance. That’s 75%. Isn’t that wonderful? Hardly anyone was sick or disabled after all!
  Tags: disability benefits britain fuckingtoriesfuckofffuckoffdiediedie
• Charlie Brooker: The AV campaigners have created a stupidity whirlpool that engulfs any loose molecules of logic | Comment is free | The Guardian – Both sides are treating the public with outright contempt
  Tags: av democracy britain electoralreform
• Gamasutra – News – Interview: Making The Fun Meant Taking Out The Fun In StarCraft II – The lead designer, who previously worked on real-time strategy games in Electronic Arts’ Command & Conquer series, said he had to make creative adjustments when he joined the StarCraft II team. For him, the main hurdle was learning how to take some of the “fun” stuff out of the game.
  Tags: gamedesign esports
• Penny Red: Riots and romance: thoughts on journalism, revolution and the anti-cuts movement. – On the charge of romance, I hold up my hands, with the caveat that the struggle of citizen versus state is essentially a romantic one. If one cares about accuracy and linguistic craftsmanship, it is very hard to describe these active clashes in a way that does not provoke passion on both sides. This is because the events themselves are moments of high emotion and challenge. Whatever their affiliations, a person’s political passions are drawn with fierce accuracy when they are asked for their opinion on a given police ruckus- and every time it happens is another chance to take the political temperature of the nation.
  Tags: journalism writing reportage romance struggle protest activism

• The Gwumps: Post-Traumatic Wastelands – But whether or not you choose to have sex with a bi-curious elf who sounds like Antonio Banderas, the trend seems to be continuing – game developers are trying to incorporate more and more “realistic” elements of adventuring as they expand what an RPG can do.  Two games especially – Dead Space II and Fallout: New Vegas – have tackled with various success two key elements that I think have been horribly, almost criminally, overlooked.  These are: 1) The effects of violence on the psyche and 2) The emotional tolls of dealing with that violence.
  Tags: writing gaming videogames rpg fallout
• No merit in merit pay for teachers | Walt Gardner | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk – It is tempting for teachers to gloat because they have long maintained that such strategies would do little, if anything, to alter outcomes. A quick rewind through history explains why they were right.
  Tags: meritpay performancerelatedpay usa education teachers
• The Escapist : Ghosts of Juarez – “The game depicts Juárez and the border as a place where there are terrorists and it is not the case. Juárez is a city where we promote work and everybody is working to better the city.” This is the head of the state of Chihuahua’s Interior Department, explaining why the state has banned Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, and ordered all copies confiscated. The Mayor of Juárez, Héctor Murguía, has spearheaded the effort after labeling the game a “despicable” attempt to portray Mexico’s “best border region” as violent and unsafe.
  The gaming press chalked it up to moral panic. Ubisoft released a statement pointing out that the story was fictional. No one was interested in exploring why the game had touched a nerve, and as a result, the gaming industry lost a crucial opportunity to examine the increasing overlap between military shooters and geopolitics.
  Tags: mexico videogames drugs organisedcrime
• 50 Unexplainable Black & White Photos – Neat!
  Tags: photography history weird cool
• LENIN’S TOMB: #26march report – It was something that I haven’t really seen en masse before. It was something that some people had written off. They said was a bit old hat, doomed to a slow, dwindling death, if it even really existed. It was the working class. Not the working class in the shitty, nostalgic, culturally regressive sense that people invoke, not the deus ex machina mobilised to berate black people and gays for being too assertive of their legitimate rights. It was the working class as an agent of its own interests; it was a class for itself. It was the labour movement, every bit the multicultural entity that Cameron reviles. And that movement, comprising several millions of people, having lain dormant for years, is now looking decidedly up for a fight. If you’re a socialist in one of those workplaces on Monday morning, you should have an easier job arguing for militant strike action now, because people now know what they could not be sure of before: that we are many, and they are few.
  Tags: protest london britain cuts recession
• New Statesman – The heavies of the state – When Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police in 1829, he insisted on a gentle approach to the growing unrest among the urban poor. Almost two centuries later, more and more British people are convinced that the police’s role is to impose the government’s austerity programme, by force if necessary. How did this happen?
  Tags: police politics power
• New Statesman – Why I’m marching today – Whatever happens, the eyes of the world will be on this city today. The ancient streets are going to shake with the stoppered rage of the public, as they have done so many times before. Seven hundred years ago, Wat Tyler led thousands in a march against feudalism and entitlement, against wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of a few rich families who owned everything and were answerable to noone. Seven hundred years later, we’re still marching, because it’s still happening.
  Tags: protest london britain cuts recession
• Nurses, lawyers, students, teachers: the faces of the anti-cuts protest | Society | guardian.co.uk – Protesters converged on London with one clear message for David Cameron’s coalition – the people are not happy
  Tags: protest london britain cuts recession
• SchNEWS 764 – 25th March 2011 – No Flies On Us – It’s March, so it’s time for a new war. To no-one’s great surprise we’re bombing the Arabs again. A few facts for history buffs – not only did “Operation Defend Libyans From Bombs By Bombing Libyans” start almost exactly seven years after the start of the Iraq War, but 2011 also marks one hundred years of aerial bombardment. The target of those first ever bombs dropped from planes in 1911? Libya.
  Tags: history libya middleeast revolution
• Slapped Down | Eurogamer.net – The defence, already mooted very publicly by hugely popular webcomic and arbitrator of gaming taste Penny-Arcade, is that hey – in Call of Duty you slaughter thousands, so how is slapping a girl to calm her down in Duke Nukem Forever “offensive”?
  It’s a persuasive argument. It’s also stupid and disingenuous. The slaughter of thousands by an improbable super-soldier is pretty blatantly within the realms of utter fantasy. Slapping women? That’s something which, sadly, happens every day in countless households around the world. There’s no funny, goofy way to give a player – playing as an all-American hero – a button which slaps a woman to calm her down, because there’s no way to do it without reinforcing the basic and sadly still widely held view that this is an acceptable thing to do.
  Tags: sexism games
• Vilifying Gaddafi externalises evil | Richard Seymour – The air strikes on Libya are, under the terms of the UN resolution, supposedly intended to protect civilians and result in a negotiated settlement between Colonel Gaddafi and the rebels. This has resulted in some controversy, as air strikes devastated Gaddafi’s compound – Bab El-Azizia, the presidential palace abutting military barracks in Tripoli. The defence secretary Liam Fox has insisted, against British army opposition, that Gaddafi would be a legitimate target of air strikes. Assassination, whatever else may be said about it, would leave Gaddafi unavailable for negotiations. But a “compound” – what could be wrong with bombing such a facility?
  Tags: humanitarianintervention war bombing libya demonisation middleeast
• BioWare writer defends romance options in Dragon Age II- Destructoid – BioWare writer says “check your privilege”. Bloody marvellous.
  Tags: games writing privilege sexuality
• “When It’s Not Your Turn”: The Quintessentially Victorian Vision of Ogden’s “The Wire” « The <b>Hooded</b> <b>Utilitarian</b> – “There are few works of greater scope or structural genius than the series of fiction pieces by Horatio Bucklesby Ogden, collectively known as The Wire; yet for the most part, this Victorian masterpiece has been forgotten and ignored by scholars and popular culture alike.  Like his contemporary Charles Dickens, Ogden has, due to the rough and at times lurid nature of his material, been dismissed as a hack, despite significant endorsements of literary critics of the nineteenth century.  Unlike the corpus of Dickens, The Wire failed to reach the critical mass of readers necessary to sustain interest over time, and thus runs the risk of falling into the obscurity of academia.  We come to you today to right that gross literary injustice.” Sheer genius.
  Tags: literarycriticism television thewire funny
• Calendar patterns – Interesting stuff – evaluative patterns in the author’s film criticism.
  Tags: film criticism
• The Lord of the Rings – “Watching The Lord of the Rings marked yet another step along my inevitable descent into senility. Because I watched it with Elizabeth, and I sounded like the elderly husband in the aisle seat at the matinee. “Huh? Wait, who’s that? Am I supposed to know who that is? And that guy! Isn’t he dead? Oh, this is a different guy? Well, what does he have to do with anything? And what did he just say?” Amazing review of the LOTR trilogy. I liked them, but this is still very funny and very astute.
  Tags: review criticism funny film
• Charlie Brooker: Midsomer’s plain daft. So why might adding brown faces make viewers suspend disbelief? – Putting aside the legality of a major commercial venture apparently enacting an employment policy that excludes people on the basis of skin colour for no good reason, many have complained that to suddenly introduce “ethnic” characters would be “PC gone mad”. Yes it would, if they introduced them solely to do a storyline about grime MCs or arranged marriages, or showed them walking around the village shaking hands with all the white folk. But no one’s asking for that. You don’t even have to change the writing. Just widen the audition process. It won’t hurt. It can only help.
  Tags: multiculturalism television writing actors disability prejudice
• Working-class Tories become an endangered species | Richard Seymour | Comment is free – Rightwing mythology has it that the cuts are necessary because of Labour’s reckless spending. The state has become bloated, choking the life out of the private sector. [...]
  But the TUC’s latest figures on the distribution of unemployment in the UK – which has now climbed to its highest level since 1994 – send a subtly different message. They show that joblessness in Labour constituencies is on average twice that in Tory constituencies. The extremes are telling. The Tory seat of Stratford-upon-Avon has only one jobseeker for every job. The core Labour constituency of Glasgow North West has 41.7 people chasing every job. The message, conveyed in the usual euphemisms about being “out of touch”, is that the Tories are the party of the shires, warriors for their class who never have to see the misery they create. And the TUC is right. After all these years, and all these spin cycles, the Tories are still a party of wealth.
  Tags: tories cuts conservatism britain politics history
• The Chimpanzee Complex… Stripp’d – This is the first in what will be an on-going series of columns. Every month, Jonathan McCalmont will look at a different set of comics. These comics will usually be part of a series and will either be translated or from one of the indie publishers. The aim of the column is to celebrate the diverse ways in which different comics, manga, graphic novels and sequential art approach ideas from science fiction, fantasy and horror when they are not trying to squeeze them into the spandex-clad postmodernity of the contemporary super hero story.
  Every month, this column will bring you a critical analysis of a different comic.  A comic that will be… Stripp’d.
  Tags: comics criticism
• 5 Popular Phrases That Make You Look Like an Idiot – There’s a famous saying that goes, “the reason it’s a cliche is because it’s true.” Well, that saying like the five that follow, sucks. There are many reasons cliches exist and most of them have to do with humans being a pathetically unimaginative species, desperately clinging to any perceived aphorism in the hope that it will bring comfort or create the illusion of intelligence. Here are the five I hate most.
  Tags: lists stupidity language cliches aphorisms

Critical reaction has been mixed. I like to think that all the people with different opinions to mine are narrow-minded or less clever than I am, because that way I get to feel intellectually superior even though I position myself as an everyman “reviewer” rather than some hoighty-toighty ivory tower “critic”.

This review is not the kind of nonsense I feared it would be when I first started writing it. I was afraid it would be another review where I’m dreaming I’m writing it and then I wake up but I’m really still dream-writing and only dreamed I woke up, but then I really wake up, but no, really I’m still dream-writing, ad infinitem (sic). This is a little bit like the movie, but most of the story challenges the audience to follow a very complex plot, rather than trying to trick the audience into falling for special-effects razzle-dazzle. There are dreams within dreams, but most of the time the audience knows when that is happening, even though this review may not really back that statement up.

So, does Inception make sense? I’m not sure. It makes more sense than most action films. It is not stupid. But it is complicated, and I’ll have to see it a couple more times before I decide if it plays fair. This sort of analytical laziness is fine because I’m a reviewer and not a critic.

On the other hand, any screenwriter who knows enough physics to understand that inside an elevator you can’t tell gravity from acceleration has my respect, because I like things that correspond with what I already know even when they’re mostly insignificant when discussing works in this medium.

This is not Leonardo DiCaprio’s best work but there are excellent actors in smaller parts, especially Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy. I’m going to assume you know the roles they play and not discuss them any further.

And Inception is popular, proving wrong the conventional wisdom that nobody wants to see films that make you think like the famously unsuccessful Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Vertigo, Seven Samurai, Fight Club, City of God, or Nolan’s own Memento. Inception is already #3 on the IMDB all time greats — a little too soon but a good sign for the future of smart science fiction films, or at least an indicator of how fickle people can be when it comes to recent blockbusters.

Imagine Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan. Then keep imagining it, and pretend you’re dreaming, because I’m not going to explain this bizarre conclusion to my “review”.

[Disclaimer: I've not seen Inception. I'll probably check it out on DVD as it sounds interesting. I also have nothing against Rick Norwood. He's probably a really nice guy doing cool stuff, but this is not a good review by any stretch of the imagination.]

• TRAP THEM’S RYAN MCKENNEY RESPONDS TO SACHA DUNABLE’S METALSUCKS COLUMN – Last week, as part of his recurring MetalSucks column, Blogronaut, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable asked the question: “Are corporate-sponsored metal shows killing the live concert market?” The blog garnered a large and impassioned response, not just from our readers who left comments, but from industry insiders who e-mailed us their thoughts directly. One of those people was Trap Them vocalist Ryan McKenney, who, with no prompting whatsoever from us, wrote the below. And since we like to think of MetalSucks as a place where all kinds of points of view can be weighed and considered, we’re running it! We hope you enjoy…
  Tags: metal touring economics band music ethics
• Resisting the cuts: building a campaign – I’m old enough to remember the Thatcher years. What I mostly recall is just how ineffective most campaigning we did was. For sure you could sometimes mobilise many people, but not always to much effect. So how should we approach the challenge we face today in campaigning against the cuts? There are two types of opposition already getting going. Many are already defending “their” bit of the public sector saying “don’t cut us, what we do is too important”. Others oppose cuts on economic grounds fearful they will push the UK into recession, though they may well want cuts further down the line. But unions and others combine these positions, and there is already an interesting debate – mainly online – about how best to maximise opposition to the cuts in general and thus shift government policy.
  Tags: cuts coalition activism strategy
• Bad translation makes fundamentalists of us all – “I was recently watching the Spanish documentary To Shoot an Elephant, about the Israeli attacks on Gaza in January 2009. The documentary is good, but the subtitles in English struck me as strange: “For the sake of Allah”, “May Allah protect [your sons] for you”, “May Allah reward you” and other references to God are recurrent throughout the film. I couldn’t help thinking that, when translated literally into English, these expressions make Arabs sound very religious – or even like fundamentalists – in the eyes of those who have a tendency to jump to quick conclusions. And no need to say there are many of these in the current context of Islamophobia as it has been shown before on Cif.”
  Tags: language arabs phrases colloquialisms
• Fawwaz Traboulsi Interviewed by Paul Jay, “A Defining Moment of the 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon” – I think the main existential threat against Israel is Israelis themselves, who believe — unfortunately, in more and more numbers — that there is no more hope for peace and who sabotage peace.  So, to start with, there’s no Israeli partner for peace, let alone everything else.  The other is this stubborn idea of trying to control 300 million Arabs by force and refusing to be part of the region.  And as much as Israel is this military state, I think it’s bringing its own downfall, especially in that for the first time in its anti-guerrilla warfare it’s failing — I mean, both in southern Lebanon and in Gaza.  It’s becoming more and more an army that kills civilians, including women and children.  And it’s obvious that any prospect for any just peace has been simply obliterated by the advent of Mr. Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing allies.  So this is the real danger for peace, for security of all the peoples of the region.
  Tags: israel lebanon palestine hezbollah iran war peace middleeast interview
• Lessons We Should Have Learned From the Iraqi Sanctions – “Very few people have been aware of exactly how the U.S. worked to maintain these sanctions over more than a decade. The Iraq sanctions regime was managed by a committee of the Security Council known as the “661 Committee.” Created by Resolution 661, it mirrored the Security Council itself, containing representatives from each state on the Council. The committee met behind closed doors. For years, the minutes were not even available to the committee’s own members. But in the course of my research, I obtained access to thousands of pages of the committee’s documents, including their minutes and internal reports. Consequently, it was possible to document what went on, in a setting where none of the participants thought there would ever be a public record of what they said and did”
  Tags: politics history usa iraq sanctions war
• gnimmel: This are serious thread – The greatest lolcat comic ever, at last I found it again.
  Tags: lolcats comic funny
• Mel Gibson’s tirades are the distilled violence, cruelty, and bigotry of right-wing Catholic ideology – This is extraordinary. We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.
  Tags: celebrities racism fascism sexism religion catholicism
• My Fault, I’m Female – Do you sometimes feel that you’re female, and it’s all your fault? MFIF (My fault, I’m female) is a blog that shares stories of women who’ve been made to feel it’s their fault that they are female at work, at home, or wherever. Basically it’s FML, but with sexist bosses, stone age attitudes, pay gap stories, and plenty of ranting.
  Tags: sexism rant blog
• Stuff You Will Hate: Scene Hair: Z0MG UR Doing It Wrong – “Origins” of “Scene” hair. Haha. <3
  Tags: scene hairstyles dumb kindacool subculture
• Black Power’s Gonna Get You Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism – “Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism. Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad. What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past?” Seriously AMAZING post.
  Tags: usa racism rightwingbullshit
• Revealed: brutal guide to punishing jailed youths | Society | The Observer – Published by the HM Prison Service in 2005 and classified as a restricted government document, the manual guides staff on what restraint and self-defence techniques are authorised for use on children as young as 12 in secure training centres. The centres are purpose-built facilities for young offenders up to the age of 17 and run by private firms under government contracts.
  Instructions to staff warn that the techniques risk giving children a “fracture to the skull” and “temporary or permanent blindness caused by rupture to eyeball or detached retina”.
  Tags: prison privatisation youthdetentioncentres youth children britain
• ‘Hollywood Accounting’ Losing In The Courts – If you follow the entertainment business at all, you’re probably well aware of “Hollywood accounting,” whereby very, very, very few entertainment products are technically “profitable,” even as they earn studios millions of dollars. A couple months ago, the Planet Money folks did a great episode explaining how this works in very simple terms. The really, really, really simplified version is that Hollywood sets up a separate corporation for each movie with the intent that this corporation will take on losses. The studio then charges the “film corporation” a huge fee (which creates a large part of the “expense” that leads to the loss). The end result is that the studio still rakes in the cash, but for accounting purposes the film is a money “loser” — which matters quite a bit for anyone who is supposed to get a cut of any profits.
  Tags: accounting economics profit hollywood filmmaking
• RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales – “We recently had a fun post about Hollywood accounting, about how the movie industry makes sure even big hit movies “lose money” on paper. So how about the recording industry? Well, they’re pretty famous for doing something quite similar. Reader Jay pointed out in the comments an article from The Root that goes through who gets paid what for music sales, and the basic answer is not the musician. That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40.” Good article, rounds up and quotes some other famous ones too.
  Tags: musicindustry riaa economics marketing music accounting
• 18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site – On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
  Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)
  Tags: archaeology history usa new york
• Tory shock therapy for the NHS is an attack on democracy – “Coming alongside cuts, these [neoliberal] reforms mean that the NHS as a service free at the point of delivery, providing quality all-round care for all, is under serious attack. This is being promulgated alongside Michael Gove’s attempt to roll back a public, comprehensive, democratically accountable education system. This isn’t happening because of the deficit, it isn’t happening because people want it, least of all is it happening because of the result of the 2010 general election – please let us be spared that insult. It’s an attack on the welfare state, it’s an attack on the working class, and it’s an attack on democracy.”
  Tags: NHS healthcare britain coalition tories classwar neoliberalism
• Bill Hicks – a romantic out of time – “Kurt Cobain once called grunge the last wave of rock. Around the same time Bill Hicks became the first rock and roll comedian.”
  Tags: comedy standup iconoclasts culture politics
• All Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online – Thanks to the Film Annex, you can now watch the complete collection of Tarkovsky films online – for free. Each film is listed in our Free Movie collection, but here you can access each major film in the order in which they were made.
  Tags: film andreitarkovsky free video stream
• Britain Rolls Out Own Unmanned Killer Jet – “Tired of not having their own manless killer plane, Britain just rolled out the $216 million Taranis, a flying deathbot drone named after the Celtic god of thunder. Or misspelled dinosaur (Taranisaurus Rex).” Oh good, we need unmanned drones more than 2.5 million jobs.
  Tags: war unmanneddrones weapons britain
• My Flixel talk: demo, source code and a couple of other bits – Kerry’s resources for using Flixel.
  Tags: flixel games coding design
• ‘Populism’ and the mob – Literal expressions of contempt for the masses tend to stick in the public throat. People don’t like it. It works better as caricature and satire. In American pop culture, this is usually expressed in cartoon form. In The Simpsons, a constant mainstay is the hysterical, shrieking, irrational crowd, inflamed with murderous rage, galvanised by some moral panic or other. Pitchforks and flaming torches appear out of nowhere, looting begins spontaneously, anarchy in its basest form prevails. In South Park, they literally mutter “rabble, rabble, rabble” as they lead their charge, addressing hysterical demands to some political or corporate authority (who, however venal, comes across as a paragon of Enlightenment against the hateful mob).
  Tags: populism democracy elitism popularculture usa capitalism
• Boris Johnson and his innovative trial methodology – We expend a vast amount of money and effort on assessing children, without much evidence that this does them any good at all; but we make no attempt to cheaply and systematically assess the teaching profession’s various education methods, despite knowing for an absolute fact that this would bring incalculable benefits for every generation to follow. Instead we have Boris and some think tank wittering on about a “competition”: and everyone takes them seriously.
  Tags: science stupid education britain
• Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 – These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.
  Tags: photography history usa
• Critical responses to my last relationship – “From the runner-up of our Short Story Award, comes the offbeat tale of a music critic and the band that made him change his tune.” Great short story.
  Tags: fiction story music relationships
• Dark Roasted Blend: Ekranoplans Showcase – They hover and skim above the water surface at speeds of up to 250 miles an hour, they carry heavier loads of cargo and troops than any airplane – the Ekranoplans, or “Wing-in-Ground” (WIG) vehicles are possibly the most exciting and strange looking technology ever designed by men. Developed mostly by Soviets during Cold Wars years (by Rostislav Alexeev’s design firm) some of them were over 500 feet in length and had an estimated weight of over 500 tons! And yet they skimmed over the waves with grace, at high speeds, able to negotiate stormy conditions, unseen by radar – all thanks to an aerodynamic principle known as the “ground effect”.
  Tags: technology prototypes design military ussr transportation war aviation

So, Jonathan McCalmont has been writing alternative ballots for the Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category of the Hugo Awards (an award perhaps best known for the controversy it causes by being utterly uncontroversial). Triangle is one of the films he included on the list and one of those which I checked out for myself.

The basic concept of Triangle is simple: a small yacht is capsized in an unusual storm and the few survivors are picked up by a cruise liner, the Aeolus, which appears to be uncrewed – until a masked figure begins picking them off with a shotgun. It’s not long before even weirder shit starts happening. Okay, from this point onwards there are going to be spoilers so if you want to check out the film free of preconceptions, stop reading now.

What makes Triangle unusual is its use of mechanics familiar to anyone who’s seen Groundhog Day or Primer – the sequences of events aboard the Aeolus, culminating in the murder of almost all of the survivors, continually repeat. Single mother Jess is the only survivor who appears to be an actor in these events rather than a recurrent victim, and as such she sets about trying to change events – to save the survivors, or to prevent them from boarding the ship in the first place.

Readers familiar with Greek philosophy will likely have already picked up on the name of the cruise liner and its significance. The film, sadly, is not quite so subtle, and one of its most clunking sequences is a scene where most of the survivors gather round and discuss the name of the ship and what it means. Of course, this is never mentioned again – it’s presumably only included to make things obvious for us thickies in the audience.

Anyway, overstated as it is the allusion itself is nice because:

1.) Aeolus was one of a triumvirate of god-figures.
2.) All three were the god of winds, and one was the son of Poseidon.
3.) Aeolus was the father of Sisyphus, who was condemned to spend his days pushing a boulder up a hill and by night seeing it roll back down again.
4.) Jess’s plight is Sisyphean in its inescapable futility and (what seems to be) endless repetition.
5.) Sisyphus has been seen by some scholars as personifying not only the rising and setting of the sun but also waves.
6.) Sisyphus was condemned to his plight by Zeus for his infractions of arrogance and hubris, specifically relating to a child.

Despite these points of confluence, however, the situation in which Jess finds herself is not directly analogous, rather it’s a variant on the concept, and I think that’s interesting. At first she appears blameless and somewhat damaged, struggling through life with her autistic son, but the film later undermines this initial perception of her as victim. In one of many uncanny moments in the film this Sisyphean figure, upon recognising her own crimes, murders and attempts to take her child away from herself – displacing the patriarchal aspects of the original myth of Sisyphus and reframing them as something else. Later she finds that she hasn’t broken the pattern at all, and instead she has made herself into a monster. There’s more to dig into here but I’m mostly mentioning this to highlight the fact that the film’s allusions had me thinking and making these connections at the same time as the plot itself keeping me glued to my seat.

What’s also interesting – and this is where the Primer comparison enters – is that what’s presented in the film is not a closed cycle. The bulk of what we see fits within the patterns we follow, but there are events that stand outside it – looping around the core events in a weird sort of elliptical orbit, if you will. It’s a conceit which cleverly indicates more than is shown, and in so doing highlights the doomed and fatalistic nature of the film.

The film is also tense throughout and solidly-paced, with some wonderful moments: small incidents which were earlier foreshadowed, or scenes which bring to the fore with crushing brutality just how many times events have looped, and how despite her best efforts to break the cycle Jess really is just doing exactly what she’s done before.

The film was shot on a relatively low budget and as a result a lot of sets are re-used – which for me added to the film’s claustrophobic air – plus visually it’s nothing to write home about, with the exception of some of its clever setpieces. The characters, on the whole, aren’t particularly memorable – Jess is played perfectly by Melissa George but the rest of the cast don’t stick in the mind, with the slight exception of Heather (Emma Lung) who is killed off very early in the film (a lucky stroke, to be honest, as in suffering this fate she avoids a worse one).

There are also holes to be poked in the film’s central conceit, such as the question of why at the film’s outset does Jess appear to be suffering from amnesia (she has experienced a traumatic accident but her decision to return to the pattern of events indicates that she remembers what has come before, at least partially), but it’s easy to self-justify these moments. Perhaps the most obvious criticism of this as a horror film is that it’s not ‘scary’ – but it’s certainly horrifying thanks to the inherent dread of being unable to escape a truly awful fate.

All in all I thought Triangle was an excellent film – very tense with a sympathetic anti-heroine lead and cleverly written with plenty of (what should have been subtle) interesting mythic allusions.

• A really big bike ride: Postcards from Poland 1: Ignorance is hell – “Take a moment to create a picture of this place in your mind. Then remove all the glass, for Szczecin is opaque. Not quite literally, of course, but this place is impenetrable. Any glass-fronted bar or cafe (there’s a couple) are full of outsiders huddled in hushed conversations witha smattering of locals seeming to beleive that to be Western is to be seen. Every other establishment must be entered through a huge wooden door to determine what it is.” A guy I work with is doing a really big bike ride…!
  Tags: cycling europe travel poland
• Film Log For The First Half of 2010 – Jonathan McCalmont’s film log for the first half of the year… can pick up quite a few recommendations from this, I think!
  Tags: film 2010
• The Escapist : Culture Wargames – Kieron Gillen’s 2005 “games as art” piece.
  Tags: gaming art entertainment medium

• Postal strike is an act of desperation – “As usual they emphasise the effects of strike action, not its causes. In the case of the postal workers the causes are simple, and they are experienced daily by the ordinary, hard-working people who deliver our mail.” A good piece, although as usual I want to punch the snide, smug, arrogant contrarian shits in the comments.
  Tags: royalmail strike UK privatisation jobs employment
• Another Wall Street bubble, thanks to the bailout – I suppose it shouldn¹t come as a surprise that the biggest of the big banks in America that sucked up tens of billions in government aid are now rolling in profits. That¹s how this game works. Thus, JPMorgan has just reported a 580% profit increase over last year to a whopping $3.6 billion third-quarter profit. The reason is, purely and simply, ­ that the money that the US government pumped into the banking and financial sector has created a new Wall St. bubble ­ with stock prices rising by nearly 50% to top the psychological benchmark of 10,000.
  Tags: economics economiccrisis capitalism boomandbust politics banking USA
• The pitfalls of tolerance – The Tories are lauded for adopting a new attitude of ‘tolerance’ toward homosexuals, and one feels an immediate pressure to partake of this cosiness, this idea that something uncomplicatedly benign is happening. Increasingly, moreover, one is apt to hear ‘tolerance’ name-dropped in respect of racial problems in the UK, in which the absence of ‘tolerance’ is either a euphemism for racism, or an attitude ascribed to supposedly self-segregating minorities. And in its function as part of a martial ideology, ‘tolerance’ is what NATO troops defend against ‘native fanaticism’. The word and its various significations do a lot of ideological work, obscuring and inverting crucial social relations, and smuggling in a patronising attitude to the subjects of said ‘tolerance’.
  Tags: tolerance politics society racism imperialism cultural UK colonialism history
• Spec-tac-ul-ar. Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love adversity – The news media spectacle of the Credit crisis, portrays our socially produced institutions of Banking Conglomerates and Federal Banks appearing as ‘god like personalities controlling our lives without reason or accountability’. Richard Seymour traces a corresponding spectacularising and alienating representation of Capitalisms inherent cyclical logic of wealth obliteration.
  Tags: capitalism culture film art representation alienation consumerism materialism richardseymour
• Better off on the dole – The focus on [recruiting] young people makes strategic sense. In 2006, 14,000 people left the British armed forces, but only 12,000 signed up – and most of the new recruits were teenagers. Last night at a Stop the War Coalition meeting, I learned a bit more about what this effort to draft the kids now entails. For it seems that the British Army is now placing stalls at further education colleges on enrolment day. And what they do when there is offer students a £5,000 bursary to sign up for the army there and then. They do not immediately join, for they are only sixteen, but rather complete their two years of study at college, and are then committed to four years of military service. This makes Britain the only country in Europe that targets sixteen year olds for military recruitment. And they don’t even necessarily stick to their own rules in this process, as it was revealed back in 2007 that the British government had sent soldiers under the age of eighteen into southern Iraq.
  Tags: waronterror armedforces recruitment UK britain afghanistan iraq youth teenagers propaganda
• Court considers stripping Silvio Berlusconi of immunity – Italy’s prime minister, already on the defensive because of a lurid sex-and-drugs scandal, could go back on trial in two cases if an act passed last year to shield him from the law is thrown out. In his address to the court, Berlusconi’s lawyer, Gaetano Pecorella, said that as a result of changes to Italy’s electoral law the nation’s prime minister could no longer be regarded in the same way as other politicians. Pecorella told the judges the prime minister was “no longer ‘first among equals’, but must be considered ‘first above equals’.”
  Tags: italy silvioberlusconi corruption capitalism
• Marek Edelman – This is what Marek Edelman did. In April 1943 he, along with some confederates of his – notably Mordecai Anielewicz, Chaim Frimmer and Adam Halperin – embarked on a violent uprising, using a combination of home-made and obsolete weapons, against the Nazis. Their aim was to stop the Nazis from transporting them to Treblinka, one of the Operation Reinhard camps, and murdering them. Two thirds of the ghetto’s population had already been taken away by the time the Jewish Fighting Organisation was formed.
  Tags: history ww2 genocide judaism resistancemovements
• The new rules of news – “Here’s a list of 22 things, not in any particular order, that I’d insist upon if I ran a news organization.” Bugger me, if only even half of these were applied.
  Tags: journalism web2.0 socialnetworks socialchange communication dialogue newspapers media
• Punknews.org | Defiance, Ohio – Distance and preoccupation tend to be the Achilles’ heel for most bands, but folk punk act Defiance, Ohio manages to make it work. Perhaps circumstance prohibit them from the more traditional band experience. Though, given everything the members are involved in, the core requirements are there: they do play shows (sometimes), they do put out records (sporadically), and they do communicate with each other (a lot). In an effort to make up for their lack of touring this year, they are making the trek down to play Fest 8. Upright bassist Ryan recently talked to Matthew Bentel about the challenges popularity incurs, the insatiable desire to stay involved, and the increasing interest in “licensing” their music.
  Tags: interview band music
• Punknews.org | The Gaslight Anthem – “Trusty Chords” (cover) – Video of the Gaslight Anthem covering HWM’s ‘Trusty Chords’.
  Tags: band music thegaslightanthem
• Hot Water Music – Retrospective Vol. 1 « (((unartig))) – Part 1 of a 4-part series of HWM retrospectives, full of live videos.
  Tags: band music hotwatermusic
• LONG DISTANCE CALLING on MySpace Music – Another rad epic prog metal/post-rock band.
  Tags: band music
• BETWEEN THE SCREAMS on MySpace Music – Epic/prog metal band.
  Tags: band music
• SPIRES on MySpace Music – Mid-pace melodic emo… really, really good.
  Tags: band music hotdamn!
• THE ARTERIES on MySpace Music – Neat UK punk rock.
  Tags: band music
• Above Them on MySpace Music – Ace melodic punk rock band from Yorkshire.
  Tags: band music hotdamn!
• Illness on MySpace Music – Wicked Brighton drum/gtr 2-piece.
  Tags: band music
• MIHAI EDRISCH on MySpace Music – Awesome French screamo band (tribute page with tunes).
  Tags: band music hotdamn!
• Punknews.org | About Nothington – Full album streams for the new album, plus preceding album ‘All In’.
  Tags: band music
• The Emergency Room on MySpace Music – Dan Andriano (Alk3) acoustic side-proj.
  Tags: band music
• Calvinball (free album download) on MySpace Music – Pretty ace Exeter punk band.
  Tags: band music
• OK PILOT on MySpace Music – Their new songs are excellent!
  Tags: band music hotdamn!
• BANGERS on MySpace Music – SxC!
  Tags: band music
• BROTHERS on MySpace Music – Pnk rck.
  Tags: band music
• Men on MySpace Music – I LIKE MENlololol
  Tags: band music
• run,WALK! on MySpace Music – SRS RADNSS
  Tags: band music hotdamn!
• Torture the Artist on MySpace Music – “Members of Screeching Weasel, Rise Against and Common Rider have joined up with vocalist Jorge Orillac – the nephew of the President of Panama – to release a record as Torture the Artist.”
  Tags: band music hotdamn!
• Failures’ Union on MySpace Music – Warm fuzz-pop/indie band (slightly a Lemuria side project).
  Tags: band music
• A TEXTBOOK TRAGEDY on MySpace Music – Good metalcore band with some occasionally cheesy, occasionally excellent melodic bits and vocal harmonies.
  Tags: band music
• Future of Music Summit: 115,000 albums and only 110 ‘hits’ – “U.S. album sales in 2008: More than 115,000 albums were released, but only 110 sold more than 250,000 copies, a mere 1,500 topped 10,000 sales, and fewer than 6,000 cracked the 1,000 barrier”
  Tags: musicindustry music business economics
• This film is on: inside the ATP movie – The comments make it sound like the film may not be so great, but this article is a great explication of why ATP is so rad.
  Tags: festivals music independentmusic
• The Thick of It: top 10 Malcolm Tucker quotes – To celebrate the return of Armando Iannucci’s political comedy on Saturday, 24 October, we recall Tucker’s finest moments.
  Tags: funny quotes
• My book is mine, not Google’s – Google has the support of the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, but it faces formidable opposition. Some 400 legal objections have been filed, and the US Department of Justice has serious concerns. The dispute was due to be resolved in court next week, but at the last minute Google and its partners asked for the case to be adjourned so they could make revisions. A hearing will still take place, but only to inform the parties concerned how Google intends to proceed.
  Tags: books publishing web online google
• Everyday Genius: Ellis Sharp – Impressionistic short story by Ellis Sharp.
  Tags: fiction ellissharp story
• What is a “clip job”? – “In the end, this article is just another “we love us” sort of thing, chockful of imaginary enemies, like “the publishers.” What exactly that’s supposed to mean remains unspoken, but well, what did you expect from a clip job?” THANK YOU. God, I wish fandom would shut up about this imagined snobbery.
  Tags: SF fantasy books publishing genre writing snobbery literature literati
• Why I Flame – As companies try to build their brands through newsgroups, e-mail feedback, and Web forums, the job title “Professional Flamer” stands ready to be penciled into the office hierarchy, right under “Chief Yahoo” and just over “Minister of Indie Culture.” In service to our employers, we flamers slither across the Internet—a realm where rudeness is a form of currency—and take out the customers, competitors, and wannabes who target businesses out of misplaced rage or the need to feel important.
  Tags: nickmamatas internet web flaming argument PR
• ‘Spider pill’ offers new way to scan for diseases including colon cancer – “A new way to scan for diseases, including cancer of the stomach or colon, using a remote contol ‘spider pill’ camera with moving legs, has been hailed by scientists in Italy.” Send one into Berlusconi, stat! Better yet, send an army!
  Tags: medicine science research technology cancer disease diagnosis robotics
• 100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words – For the last hundred years, rightsholders have fretted about everything from the player piano to the VCR to digital TV to Napster. Here are those objections, in Big Content’s own words.
  Tags: technology innovation content art creativity music television film business copyright