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Gobbets brutally and hastily ripped from the foul, rotting carcass of the internet. Placed here for the use, misuse and general abuse of rabid web scavengers. Brought to you by the disastrous and pitiful mind behind An Unreliable Witness.

What is this?

I’m trying to leave myself a trail of breadcrumbs so I can hopefully find my way back from wherever I am now. I’m not entirely sure. If this exists.

(via pandemian)

The online friendship of familiars and strangers is largely an illusion. It can be shaped to our individual needs, deleted and blocked. An extension and validation of self, it is but one small step away from being kept company by a computer with a programme to please. Real talk to real people, in contrast, cannot be kept at bay with a click of the finger. Feelings and ideas, in all their contradictoriness and complexity, need to be expressed in words, tone of voice and facial expressions rather than being tapped out in text, tweet or email, with symbols representing emotions.

Columnists: are you afraid of your readers? 

Just because I’ve become rather tired of seeing columnists taking to Twitter to whinge, behind readers’ backs, about the comments being left in response to their latest article. Maybe they should engage?

Real people live alone too 

The Guardian today published a rather good article on living alone - something that a growing number of people, including me, are doing. Unfortunately, in my not-so-humble but increasingly journalist-loathing opinion, the article had one major failing. So I wrote about it at the link below, naturally assuming that Guardian editors will rush to read it before exclaiming “You’re so right! What were we thinking?”

Romany WG - Abandoned Church (Philadelphia) [via paxmachina]

However. You see what you did, young people. Yeah, you shunted out the cake growers and ushered in some nightmarish Harry Potter spinoff featuring Slytherin overlords and magical Lib Dem owls. But … but it’s not our fault, you blubber, nagging old husks like you kept urging us to remember the 80s and we did and to be honest they seemed pretty cool. That, we say, is because for you the 80s are a grainy VHS mixtape of fish fingers, Thundercats and dicking about in paddling pools. They are not about the disposal of nationalised industry and the systematic destruction of the trade union movement.

[via @welsh_gas_doc on Twitter]

Crime and the City Solution: The Dolphins and the Sharks

(via pandemian)

The power is in your hands, but just for the weekend 

This weekend, The Guardian is putting its new Open Journalism strategy into action with an Open Weekend for us, the great unwashed public. Except that, like almost all attempts at ‘people power’, I’m not quite convinced that this whole exercise is as open as they’d like you to think…

Mirel Wagner: No Death

Lower Dens: Brains

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