Friday Reading S02E10

It’s Friday. It’s my round-up of stuff I read this week which I reckoned was worth sharing so that you might read it too.

And if you find you like this sort of round-up, sign up to my email and it will pop into your inbox every week…

“We’ve now been told that there will be a gap of four years between our home being demolished and the new one being built. They can’t tell us where we would live in those four years, who would pay our mortgage. They probably know they don’t need to work that level of detail out – it’s untenable that we would accept such a detrimental position.”

Grim tale of forced property redevelopment going on in Walthamstow – they’ve spent millions building a plaza and children’s playground as a hub for the Wood Street community, and now it is all going to be knocked down and residents forced out.

“Yeah, your visualisations are really pretty but they also suck” – exquisite data journalism over-elaboration smackdown from former Ampp3d colleague Sophie Warnes.

“If the British carry on like this, the Channel will become our Berlin Wall: a frontier guarded by paramilitary police and sniffer dogs, which innocent people die trying to cross. Britain’s common-law tradition that agents of the state have no right to demand you ‘produce your papers’ without just cause will have to go too.”

“If you hate the migrants in Calais, you hate yourself” – Nick Cohen

“Perhaps you think there are no parallels between the experiences of European Jews in the 1930s, and those of the Syrians, Eritreans and Afghans who, as my parents did more than 75 years ago, look to Britain as a safe haven, a place where they might be able to make some sort of life for themselves. But you may recognise some of the media comment from the 1930s, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the headlines of today.”

“My father was an illegal immigrant” – Robin Lustig

“That changed when I gained access to the previously classified Cabinet Office papers. They appear to show the role of Whitehall in the film’s original TV banning was much more extensive than anything publicly acknowledged by either the government or the BBC at the time.”

The Government trying to have its say about what the BBC broadcasts – plus ça change etc…

“The War Game: how I showed that BBC bowed to government over nuclear attack film” – John Cook

I’m rather fond of this analysis that Labour and the Conservatives are both themselves two divided parties held together in a loveless marriage because our electoral system would doom either of them if they followed their convictions and split.

Why every blog post should be crossposted to LinkedIn and Medium. You wot mate?

Oh the #GamerGate humanity of it all (#1)

Oh the #GamerGate humanity of it all (#2)

This is pretty spot on about why Rocket League is such glorious disposable fun in online player mode.

And this is wonderfully funny about why Batman is such a douchebag.

“I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me…Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my used garments.”

Talking of douchebags, this essay by the Soylent guy is possibly the most amount of words anyone has ever used to say “I am an obnoxious self-righteous wanker”

Aye, here’s the rub…

“And [Rebecca Black’s] overexposure came just moments too soon in the history of the viral video industrial complex to translate into anything resembling a sustainable career. ”

“The Unbreakable Rebecca Black” – Reggie Ugwu

An unfashionable view of Cilla Black that you probably didn’t read this week.

“Dark Season” was an absolute gem of early 90’s kids TV from RTD with at least enough similarities in tone to Doctor Who that I watched it at the time even though I was a little bit older than the show’s target audience. Alright, a lot older, I was in my twenties. Good blog overview if you aren’t familiar with it.

“Here, the moment of truth, the perfect swan dive, both feet off the ground now, arms extended to the inevitable impact of the ground beneath him, the grey concrete swimming up to say hello, and a clear, glass-like moment of calm; his face soft and accepting, his body ready for a fate his angry mind has dealt it, knowing now that the pain will come, a pain deep not only in his fingers and face but also in his ego, dented like a Peugeot bonnet after a low-speed impact with a cyclist. This is a moment that stretches for infinity. It is a moment of high beauty and art. Has 2015 rendered a moment more perfect than this? It has not. ”

Joel Golby’s excruciatingly accurate breakdown of that video of the row between the very angry driver and the somewhat sanctimonious cyclist.

“I built 5 stupid Twitter robots and they failed to fill the void in my heart”

Oh Ed.

I’m on holiday for a couple of weeks now. Series 2 of Friday Reading will continue later in the year. Also I totally nicked the idea of calling these SxxEnn from Dan Hon so sign up to his newsletter because I owe him that and it is also a better one than mine.