Weekend Reading

  • Phoebe Waller-Bridge on Fleabag, Star Wars and presenting this year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards

    When Phoebe Waller-Bridge was writing Fleabag, her show about a chaotic twentysomething woman who, as she winningly puts it, “w**ks down the barrel of the camera”, she had just started dating the man who is now her husband.
    Massive fan of this very talented person. If you haven’t seen Fleabag, find it, watch it now. I’m getting really fed up recommending it to people WHO HAVEN’T WATCHED IT YET!!

  • ’Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

    Justin Rosenstein had tweaked his laptop’s operating system to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook. But even that wasn’t enough.
    There is a balance that can be found but this does make me question if I’m actually as good at maintaining that as I think

  • McDonalds’ Rick and Morty Szechuan sauce stunt backfires

    A McDonalds’ PR stunt to bring back a rare dipping sauce left thousands of fans disappointed and police called to some restaurants on Saturday.The Szechuan sauce, which was only made in 1998 to promote the film Mulan, has become well known after featuring in the popular cartoon Rick and Morty.
    AKA some people are just fuckin morons.

  • A Pre-History of Slashdot on its 20th Birthday

    Jeff chipped in a few bucks for the fees. Kathleen told me the name was stupid. I thought, “That’s kinda the point!” I originally used the name ‘slashdot’ on my desktop a year earlier when I got my first static IP in the Voorhees Hall dorm room I shared with Dave.
    One of the first tech websites I followed back in the day.

  • The Horizon of Desire

    “Man fucks woman. Man: subject. Woman: object.” The first thing you need to understand about consent is that consent is not, strictly speaking, a thing. Not in the same way that teleportation isn’t a thing. Consent is not a thing because it is not an item, nor a possession.
    A must read. Not easy but uncomfortable truths rarely are.

  • Louise Redknapp Isn’t Following The ‘Perfect Wife’ Script

    We’re used to Strictly stars undergoing transformations. Perhaps a heartwarming tale of a male sportstar getting in touch with his emotions or a female celeb showing off her hot new bod after 10 weeks of shimmying around the dancefloor.
    Not really close to this story but the basic principle appears to be ‘women aren’t allowed to do what they want’? FFS

  • Hacking is inevitable, so it’s time to assume our data will be stolen

    Companies are prone to understating the scale of hacks, which suggests that there needs to be better standards for disclosing breaches. Yahoo recently confessed that its data breach actually impacted 3 billion user accounts, .
    IT reality as predicted 10 years ago? Longer? If you aren’t managing your accounts/passwords smartly by now then you are too late.

  • Dating yourself

    I am single and actually loving it, finally. It has taken a year or so but I am finally feeling whole and happy as a person who is not in a relationship. I do not need someone else to complete me or make me more of a person, or more content in my own skin.
    Right in the feels.

  • The Creator of Bitcoin Comes Clean, Only to Disappear Again

    Ten men raided a house in Gordon, a north shore suburb of Sydney, at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 9, 2015. Some of the federal agents wore shirts that said “Computer Forensics”; one carried a search warrant issued under the Australian Crimes Act 1914.
    I’m a suburb!

  • Logical

    So simple. So true. (read the tooltip!)

  • Glasgow Science Centre send a Tunnock’s Teacake into space

    Glasgow Science Centre have carried out one of the most momentous space launches in Scotland’s history – sending a Tunnock’s Teacake into orbit. Staff at the Clydeside centre have launched the humble teacake, named Terry, from pad in Houston (that’s Houston, Renfrewshire, not Houston, Texas).
    Conflicted: YAY SCIENCE IN SCOTLAND! Booooo, what a waste of a teacake?

  • On living with the feelings in my head

    When I was 10 years old, I learned that my father had a brain tumour. He was treated, our family life continued.
    More feels.

  • How to Care for Your Introvert

    (Not to be confused with Caring for Your Introvert.) I started this video thinking it was a serious thing but ended up laughing embarrassingly hard almost all the way through. A pair of introverts is called an ‘awkward’. A group of introverts is called an ‘angst’.
    LOLs

  • The crazy, true story of the birth of the Warriors’ historic offense

    The sanctuary for the early check-ins, the merely laid-over and the maddeningly delayed is tucked between Gates 25 and 26 in Terminal 2 at Oakland International Airport.
    Bit early (3 years in) to say historic? Actually… no.

  • How Men Like Harvey Weinstein Implicate Their Victims in Their Acts

    If you have ever experienced sexual assault or harassment, you know that one of the cruellest things about these acts is the way that they entangle, and attempt to contaminate, all of the best things about you.
    Utterly vile the way these things play out. Where is the humanity?

  • First Evidence That Online Dating Is Changing the Nature of Society

    Not so long ago, nobody met a partner online. Then, in the 1990s, came the first dating websites. Match.com went live in 1995. A new wave of dating websites, such as OKCupid, emerged in the early 2000s. And the 2012 arrival of Tinder changed dating even further.
    This is both fascinating, and a little bit ‘no shit sherlock’.

  • How Video Games Satisfy Basic Human Needs

    Grand Theft Auto, that most lavish and notorious of all modern videogames, offers countless ways for players to behave. Much of this conduct, if acted out in our reality, would be considered somewhere between impolite and morally reprehensible.
    This is also both fascinating, and a little bit ‘no shit sherlock’.