February 2012
12 posts
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
January 2012
38 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Haterz
I came across this commentary from Edward Collier at the Guardian about the phenomena of haterz. Why, he wonders, do some people hate Coldplay so very much?
I can understand people hating Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher because politicians have a direct effect on our lives, but how does [frontman Chris] Martin affect anyone? If his music comes on the radio, turn it off. If he’s interviewed...
Everything is authentic
All the discussion over Lana Del Ray has become really interesting since the cooldude dads turned on her. Sasha Frere-Jones of the New Yorker talks about the criticism LDR has faced over her authenticity:
Why is pop music the only art form that still inspires such arrantly stupid discussion? The debates that surround authenticity have no relationship to popular music as it’s been practiced for...
The Newton-Raphson method has no practical use in...
My diary from 1992 is full of gold. Here, I am stressing over the Bursary maths with statistics class. I’d heard it was easy, but I was massively struggling with it. I ended up switching to another class, but before I did that, I wondered…
What use is statistics?
For quite a long time, I naively thought that the stuff I learned in this class would benefit me in years to come. I...
A good day
In account of Ice Cube’s “good day” being scientifically determined to be January 20 1992, I dug out my diary from that year and realised that that day was also a good day for me - I went to Surfer’s Paradise for a family holiday:
7.10am I’m getting ready to leave at 7.45. How unexciting!
I’ve always time-logged notes like this on holiday, starting on a...
1 tag
Something that doesn't happen in the peaceful...
This has happened to me twice. A person emails me asking if I’ll add a link to their website on my blog, but I have one there already. This always breaks my heart because I realise they haven’t even looked at my website and it feels like they’re just using me. Ugh. A guaranteed way to get removed from my links page.
Netiquette
Leigh Alexander at Thought Catalogue rages against people who are still hung up on ’90s-style netiquette.
Somehow, though, there are still people who if you TYPE IN ALL CAPS will reply [via Twitter or similar]: “WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING,” as if caps lock text were actually, quantifiably and materially somehow still analogous to ‘shouting,’ as if it were possible to ‘shout’ via unvoiced prose....
1 tag
This is brilliant. Some academic research has been done to determine if the order of performance affects the way a performer is judged on an Idol talent show. The answer: yes, it does, and in every country with an Idol series. The NZ Herald reports:
A study has found that the later would-be stars perform in a show, the better they are likely to rate.
But performing after a bad act can also rub...
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
Human Wikipedia
Wikipedia is currently blacked out in protest against SOPA. I decided to put my giant nerd brain to use on Twitter, offering to act as a human Wikipedia for anyone who was in need of some knowledge.
@robyngallagher If you need to know something on Wikipedia, ask me instead. I will make something up.
@petrajane I would like to know how waffles were invented. @robyngallagher A punk guy was...
Rushfield Babylon: Undead Hipsters and Trend... →
richardrushfield:
For the first time perhaps since the 90’s I went out the other night to a place where I would be among large numbers of the youngs, to a screening of Battle Royale at the very great Cinefamily in West Hollywood. I know, going to a screening of that film I was asking for whatever I got, so please…
Unlike every other trend culture that’s come along in the past 60...
Justice for Princess
In New Zealand law, it’s illegal for a person to have a name that is a royal or significant title. I believe this restriction came about after an unsavoury fellow changed his first name to “Sir”, but it now means that there are to be no kids with names like Sir, Bishop, Majesty or Constable.
The two most rejected names are Princess and Justice. The blocking of Princess is...
Excuse me, I had beans for lunch #ttrttpt
A few months ago I started to see a few people putting #ttrttpt at the end of some tweets, usually ones that related to some sort of miserable event. For example:
But I’ve asked him before and he keeps saying he’ll get back to me. #ttrttpt
I didn’t know what it meant, but thought maybe it was an expression like “pffft”.
It turns out it’s an acronym used by...
“I never think of sexuality as an identifier. What seems to have defined me more...”
– Carrie Brownstein, in the New Yorker.
1 tag
December 2011
51 posts
Happy! New! Yeah!
Every year around December 31, there used to be an avalanche of tweets from people declaring that year to have been so shit, good riddance to it, and bring on the new year.
This year, however, there has been a distinct lack of those tweets.
I suspect this is because 2011 has been a dramatic, eventful and sometimes tragic year. No one wants to be the drama queen/king who declares 2011 to be the...