Churnalism is a brilliant idea – no surprise that it was originally one of Chris Lightfoot’s. Basically, it allows you to determine how much of a given newspaper article was copied from which press release. There’s a nice graphic visualisation, and a diff, so you can see precisely what was altered and what taken over…
Read More Fun with nonsense and hash functionsLooking back at Tunisia, and forward at Egypt, I think there’s an important point that this post almost hits but not quite. Specifically, I’m fairly sceptical about “Twitter Revolutions” and such – if your revolution has someone else’s brand name on it, how revolutionary is it? – but I don’t think it’s irrelevant. I’m feeling…
Read More in the future, trolls will be a natural resource like oilNow here’s a worthwhile Canadian initiative for you, from here. And he names the guilty men.
Read More operationalising postmodernismThis would do as a HOWTO start a war. The document, drawn up by John Williams, press adviser to the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, spells out ways to soften up the media, including “critics like the Guardian”. Under the heading Not taking the UN route, Williams wrote: “Our argument should be narrow, and put…
Read More repetition, repetition, repetitionSo there’s this web application that does a corpus analysis of your writing and compares it to others….I chucked this post at it. I write likeH. P. Lovecraft I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing! I suppose Charlie Stross is right in linking the Lovecraft mythos and international politics. Further evidence…
Read More again with the nameless dread!So, I went to see Chris Morris’s takfiri flick, Four Lions. Short review – it’s desperately, barkingly hilarious. Stupidly funny. It started with the snickering. The snickering led to giggling and the giggling led to batshit honking horselaughs all night long. Perhaps too funny – one of the markers of Chris Morris’s work is that…
Read More we’re the muslimeen, creating a sceneI’m actually quite pleased with our little demo. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic when we assembled in Trafalgar Square, where various speeches were made of which not one word was audible (note to the various orgs involved: I’d happily spring for some batteries for the loud hailer. I mean, my student union would have got that…
Read More I don’t know what they mean by that…Just a couple of disorganised thoughts on this. There’s a sort of integrated cultural package of denialism out there; rather like Michael Berube’s Wingnut Software Package. Key components: Computer hate. I encountered people complaining that the Eyjafjallajokull ash cloud was being forecast with “the same computer models that forecast global warming”. No doubt we’ll soon…
Read More notes on denial cultureApple’s internal security team may be scary – and especially the name (Worldwide Loyalty Team). But they are as nothing, in terms of creepiness, to this Microsoft web page, which provides the criteria against which MS employees are assessed for their use of humour and the targets they are given to improve. You will not…
Read More killer meme watchAaronovitch Watch reflects upon dinner with Denis MacShane. There’s an important point here, and one that was well made as a by-product of Nick Davies’ brilliant reporting on Operation PENTAMETER 2, a giant police sweep looking for prostitutes brought into the UK by force that failed to find even one. It turned out that the…
Read More permanently operating factors