Weekend Reading

  • What Was Inside the Glowing Briefcase in Pulp Fiction?
    Before I started making my own web pages, I spent a not-insignificant amount of my time on the Internet trawling the alt.fan.tarantino newsgroup for bits of knowledge about Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, and Reservoir Dogs.
    Fascinating! (well not really, but still v.cool)

  • iPad Pro (2018) Impressions
    (to the tune of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer) You know ‘Ticci and Gruber, @panzer and Ritchie… Marco and Jason, Joe and Rosemary… But do you recall, the most famous YouTuber of all? MKB(in)HD, had a very shiny Pro… Um, so, yeah.
    My favourite kind of review is one written by ‘real people’. 
  • In Defence of Hate
    Hate can be valid and powerful, but far often it’s misused and misguided.

  • American Women of the Far Right
    In the run-up to the violence last year around the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a woman named Erika, who is active in the white supremacist group Identity Evropa, was busy posting on Discord, an app originally used by gamers but used at that time by some on the far right.
    Important to remember, that there are all genders involved in this. The men are the figureheads, but there are many other people supporting them.

  • Your City Has a Gender and It’s Male
    Why city designers are increasingly thinking about the female perspective. I have a secret to tell you about my city,” she says. “It has to do with what Eve Ensler calls the feminine cell.” It was the autumn of 2016.
    Rings true for Glasgow.

  • Thanks David Dimbleby. Now maybe Question Time can get with the times
    Imagine the joy of turning to David “Brexit will be a walk in the park” Davis, live on TV, and saying: “Some people might think you ARE the joke about Brexit.” Last night David Dimbleby showed why he has been able to choose his own abdication date.
    Not a show I watch because UGH.

  • Not Here to Dance
    This is the story of the greatest night of my entire life. This is about a moment from the Ballon d’Or ceremony that I will never forget, even if I lived 200 years. It has nothing to do with dancing.
    Yes to this. Sport is so very visible, and men are still such jackasses.
  • How I Quit Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon
    It was just before closing time at a Verizon store in Bushwick, New York last May when I burst through the door, sweaty and exasperated. I had just sprinted—okay I walked, but briskly—from another Verizon outlet a few blocks away in the hopes I’d make it before they closed shop for the night.
    tl:dr; it’s very very hard.

  • This is What Happens to Kids’ Brains When They Talk To Alexa
    While I bathe my 3-year-old daughter Marty each evening, we use Alexa to play music — usually a head-spinning rotation of her three favorite songs from Frozen.
    Pause for thought. We really don’t know the longer reaching implications for so much of the technology we use these days.
  • The technology that could end traffic jams
    We’ve all been there. Stuck at traffic lights that never seem to change to green. Sitting in queues of cars that stretch on for miles or delayed by a glut of slow traffic that suddenly disappears. Traffic jams are a blight on our modern, fast moving lives.
    A real bugbear, I know this technology exists, let’s use it!
  • Tibet Is Going Crazy for Hoops
    It was within such a village, Zorge Ritoma, that Dugya Bum, a sheep and yak herder from the Golden Stone Clan, took up the sport.
    Zen basketball, see also; Chicago Bulls of the late 80s.

  • The Endurance of A Christmas Carol
    On January 2, 1840, Dickens wrote to his printers, Bradbury and Evans, to thank them for their annual Christmas gift of a turkey. He chose his words with care:
    What’s this, what’s this! A christmas article!

  • Year in Pictures 2018
    It was a year of populist rebellions and political stare-downs. China’s ambitious expansions raised hackles and pollution levels. Trade patterns were upended, and long-standing bans were lifted. Women gained power, and refugees fled violence and starvation.
    A picture tells… etc etc

  • The Rise of Anxiety Baking
    Last winter, a recipe for salted chocolate-chunk shortbread cookies spread through my social circle like a carbohydrate epidemic. One of my friends kept seeing the cookies pop up on Instagram and, relenting to digital peer pressure, eventually made them.
    Makes sense. I do enjoy baking, although mostly the eating part at the end.

  • Real Christmas trees are the greener choice
    A fake Christmas tree has some obvious advantages over the real thing. There’s no sticky sap. No needles shedding everywhere.
    We always had a fake tree. Time to review that choice.

  • Prime and punishment
    Last August, Zac Plansky woke to find that the rifle scopes he was selling on Amazon had received 16 five-star reviews overnight. Usually, that would be a good thing, but the reviews were strange.
    Is Amazon too big to legislate?

  • 12 Reasons To Ditch The Diet Mentality
    It’s the end of the year, which means resolution season is right around the corner.
    Yes to this! Although I may have gone a little too far into the ‘not giving a shit what I eat’ zone…

  • The Story of Dyngo, a War Dog Brought Home From Combat
    It was late—an indistinguishable, bleary-eyed hour. The lamps in the living room glowed against the black spring night. In front of me was a large dog, snapping his jaws so hard that his teeth gave a loud clack with each bark. His eyes were locked on me, desperate for the toy I was holding.
    What is it with stories about dogs… *sniff*