Friday Reading S06E13

Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from the Guardian’s Social and New Formats Editor Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology. It is also available as an email newsletter – sign up here

A difficult week. On Monday the Conservative u-turn and chaos over their social care policy, and Theresa May’s performance under Andrew Neil’s scrutiny made for one of the most cheering days covering the General Election to date. And then that night I ended up helping to live blog the disgusting attack on young children and teenagers in Manchester.

Here is the Dart Center’s guide for journalists covering tragedies, including how to look after themselves.

Hussein Kesvani was good earlier in the year on how “Post-Terror Responses are now Gamified” and he wrote again, on how “We need to talk about post-terror better”

I posted on Facebook during the week that: “One thing about days like today. They are absolutely emotionally draining to work on, but there will be so many people all over the country who feel completely powerless to help but want to, and I’m lucky, because I get to do something that I think is helpful – spreading correct accurate information to as wide an audience as possible”

Then also I get to string a load of tweets together to try and cheer Guardian readers up: “#BritishThreatLevels hashtag delivers stoical humour in the face of terror”

“The unnamed operator of the Guardian’s Twitter account has broken ranks and done something quite heroic” ?

I look forward to a future where me and Tinworth are in an old people’s home together, the last two media people left alive still updating their blogs: “Why you should blog, according to a VC”

Adam also good at turning this up: “Norwegian paper makes local journalism local again”

“For years, studies have shown Americans’ trust in the news media is steadily declining. At the same time, data show that over the past decade, people have been consuming more news than ever. How are we to explain the apparent paradox?”

Turns out it’s because they love their favourite channel to death, and distrust everything else as MSM shills etc – “‘My’ Media Versus ‘The’ Media: Trust in News Depends on Which News Media You Mean”

Meme Historians Are an Inevitability.

I’ve a hunch we’ll be hearing a lot more about internet and encryption in the weeks to come. This is still pretty technical but stick with it: “Tor is End-to-End Encryption for Computers to talk to other Computers (and you probably need to think about these things if you are a journalist)”

Also a bit techie in places, but worth a read: “Kill Google AMP before it KILLS the web”

“From what I can tell, the Daily Telegraph was the first publication to share his name, although other festering sphincters of bad journalism — namely The Sun, The Mirror, and The Daily Mail — weren’t far behind. I’m not going to link to their piece, because fuck them.”

“Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb” – Matthew Hughes

“Unless you have an obvious marker of another person’s intent, you can’t really gauge their intent. They could be messing around. They could be deadly serious. They could be a mix of both”

“Hiding in plain sight: how the ‘alt-right’ is weaponizing irony to spread fascism” – Jason Wilson

Ryan Broderick seems to be one of the few journalists regularly wading into this alt-right sewer to dig up stories: “Trump Supporters Have Built A Document With The Addresses And Phone Numbers Of Thousands Of Anti-Trump Activists”

“Class means something entirely else to snooker now than it did when it was invented. One-hundred-and-forty years after its invention under the watchful gaze of beasts killed in the name of British glory, one of the sport’s all time greats, Ronnie O’Sullivan, played pool with Ed Miliband. In the Common Room Pool Club in Sheffield, he offered up his game in support of the Labour party.”

Fascinating meditation on class and snooker and politics: “How Ronnie O’Sullivan Found Politics”

Her experience makes her a unique voice writing in the media: “Amanda Knox: How Prisons Use Cult Tactics to Brainwash Inmates Into Religion”

Saw a friend link to this, pointing out that these kind of desire paths are the UX of living in a city: “Desire Paths Of The East End”

“Eight months had passed since Cliven and hundreds of supporters, including heavily armed militia members, faced off against the federal government in a sandy wash under a highway overpass in the Mojave Desert. Now, here in the comforts of the Bellagio, six documentary filmmakers trained bright lights and high-definition cameras on Ryan. They wanted to ask about the standoff. Wearing a cowboy hat, Ryan fidgeted before the cameras.”

“The Bizarre Story Behind the FBI’s Fake Documentary About the Bundy Family”

Someone has uploaded some footage of the DLR from the 1980s to YouTube and I am always totally there for that type of thing.

That Time I Paid $6,544 for 256MB of RAM to Run Photoshop

The The have a first new single out for 15 years and the video is online and it is a seemingly effortless come-back: “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming”

“Looking at the UK chart history, you may be surprised to learn that there is actually not a single year since its release in which ‘Mr Brightside’ has not been in the Top 100.”

Sorry, wut? “How and Why Has ‘Mr Brightside’ Never Left the UK Charts?”

I can’t vouch for the science here, but Enola Gay, is mother proud of Little Boy today? What happened to the radiation that was supposed to last thousands of years in Hiroshima?

Absolutely fucking love these kind of stories: “‘Ghost girl’ captured in chilling group photo at old asylum sparks mystery”

There was a lovely anecdote about Roger Moore doing the social media rounds. Rob interviewed the man who told it: “This story about Roger Moore meeting a fan is what you need right now to lift your spirits”

“Herodotus recounts how the Persian diviner Hegesistratus, when imprisoned by the Spartans, amputated part of his own foot to escape his shackles, then procured a wooden replacement.”

“Severed limbs and wooden feet—how the ancients invented prosthetics” – Jane Draycott

“Cats and dogs and Pokémon and ball pools: The eight joyful trains of Japan” by Rachel Holdsworth

I give you: D&D magic spells, designed by neural network

SEE ALSO: Metal band names invented by neural network

SEE ALSO: An AI invented a bunch of new paint colours that are hilariously wrong

What happens when you divide by zero on mechanical calculator?

How can you not love an article that includes the line “the reasoning behind all this, according to Wombles canon” – “Where exactly are the Wombles named after? We made a map”