Here’s a case study in unpopular populism: ‘The ravers should have more respect for Mr Blobby. He was a hero to a lot of kids and the thought of them taking drugs and having all-night raves in his house is completely disrespectful.’. The photographs are truly eerie. Like this one: Of course, it was never…
Read More blobby blobby blobbyBrilliant post from Dan Lockton on the design problems of making smart meters usable and useful. In a sense, it relates to this post at the RSA’s Social Brain about “the dark side of “nudge””; of course, the downside of all these neat ideas about adjusting people’s decision processes into ones that are more rational,…
Read More tattyA lot of The Accidental Guerrilla concerns ideas of terrain, space, and time. In fact, quite a bit of it could be considered an architectural approach to counter-insurgency. This is not surprising; a major theme is the idea that the conflict environment – the state of being at war or potentially at war, the disrupted…
Read More Accidental Guerrilla, Part 3: SpaceGreat rant at Kosmograd against Kirstie Allsopp and much more economic-aesthetic crappery. I recall her grinning chops advertising some sort of Sink Your Life Savings And More In Bulgarian Property for Riches! fest on Tube hoardings in the winter of 2007-2008, which must take some sort of award for televisual irresponsibility. Swinging from branch to…
Read More get ready for another low dishonest decadeVia Airminded, find your local V2 rocket strike. London, Antwerp, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Riyadh, and Tehran have what in common? That’s right, it’s the list of cities that have been subjected to attack from space. Then, why not go here and look up how big a hole it made? Someone’s photographed and flickr’d a whole…
Read More there are, however, rockets in this postSo I reviewed the rebuilt St Pancras Station about this time last year. So, in the best Stewart Brand tradition, let’s revisit it; this time of year tends to give you opportunities to revisit major railway stations. The first good news; the square footage of blue plywood and Tyvek has fallen, and is now close…
Read More The New St Pancras, 12 Months OnWell, very cool. Yahoo has an API that’s meant to let you do database-like read operations on anything web – you just pass your SELECT… statement and the URL and a few other arguments, and it chucks back a JSON document with your information. I haven’t managed to make it do anything interesting yet, but…
Read More a cloud of reinforced concreteThis looks like being the ultimate TYR event. Via Ballardian, yer man from BLDGBLOG is going to be speaking at UCL on the 26th November on Feral Cities and the Scientific Way of Warfare. Quote: At the very least, you’ll get an early preview of Antoine’s forthcoming book – in which he introduces the term…
Read More the stars are right…Is anyone else disturbed by the fact Ed Balls appears to have been replaced by Chris Dillow? Ed Balls, the schools secretary and only member of the Co-operative party in the cabinet, will today propose that 100 schools over the next two years become co-operative trust schools owned and controlled by the local community. He…
Read More tomorrow’s public inquiry todayThis story; from China is predictably horrible: Chinese authorities have sentenced two women in their 70s to a year’s “re-education through labour” following their application to hold a protest demonstration during the Beijing games, a relative said yesterday. Officials said this week they had not approved a single permit for a demonstration, despite designating three…
Read More Can’t we be more helpful and appropriate?