Links.

Why is Donal Blaney’s unsold property named after Rupert Murdoch’s yacht? (via here). Seems an odd kind of coincidence.

“Do you have McAfee antivirus on your computer?” He looked at me and put down his cigarette. “I take it off,” he said. “It’s too annoying.”

“A Christmas Carol and Nineteen Eighty-Four are actually disturbingly similar – in fact, the best way to think of A Christmas Carol is that it is the kind of story that a Thought Policeman tells his children at night.”

IAmA neuroscientist building a brain simulator. In Python.

How could this guy possibly have turned out to be an IT professional…oh. Apparently he worked on the MOD’s monster DII project, the effort to centralise all the defence establishment’s workstations and non-tactical networks, a predictable procurement disaster. It makes sense.

A really good profile of No.10 Downing Street permanent secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood. Not sure about the personality focus, but more Whitehall and less Westminster coverage is good. And Heywood is apparently the only man ever to move into investment banking in order to put in fewer hours, before moving back to civil service because he found it dull (and Gordon Brown asked him).

Also, this:

On reflection, friends say the guest list tends to be slightly more left-leaning than right, although they wonder if this might simply be out of a reluctance to bring the current inhabitants of Downing Street home at the weekend, rather than hinting at his political inclinations.

Well, you could put it that way. The combination of Osborne with the domme and the bag of money, Dave from PR and Gove arguing about Victorian values, Samantha kitchendancing to Azalea Banks, and Clegg blubbing in the crapper…it’s just not the sort of thing Yorkshire public servants go in for. Shaving your rugby league club’s crest into your hair and getting your wife to do her Marlene Dietrich impression on a chunk of Ercol furniture, built strong by the craftsmen who did the De Havilland Mosquito, though…

Just how long can Curiosity keep exploring Mars?

Not this shit again.

Hey this is my aunt rockin’ this one. She was dope as hell! (thanks, Matt.)