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- The Secrets Of Cornwall – Part 1 – Communications – YouTube
- Blokes drive around Cornwall looking at manhole covers and work out the landing points of undersea cables, and where the GCHQ intercept points disclosed by Snowden might be.
(tags: cornwall cables telecommunications gchq internet edward-snowden porthcurno)
- Satanists want to use Hobby Lobby decision to exempt women from anti-abortion laws
- This is win. Hail Satan, and His only Son, Harry Potter.
(tags: satanism abortion law)
- Harry Connick Jr & French Rhythm Accents – YouTube
- Harry Connick Jr sorts out the audience’s clapping (from 1&3 to 2&4). Can you spot how? Genius.
(tags: music clapping afterbeat)
- Between the Hammer and the Anvil: On Countering The Ukip Cri-de-Colon
- Author shares my frustration that Labour apparently has no balls: “Every unchallenged Question Time assertion that people aren’t allowed to talk about the topics that they are themselves talking about on national television at that very moment. Every word from the party’s self-appointed detectors of the legitimate feelings of thick-headed bellends. All of it has been leading to precisely this point, at which politicians explicitly talking about sending them back are seen as engaging in respectable conjecture, and posting a picture on the internet is a sackable offence.”
(tags: ukip politics immigration racism labour)
- Why Are All The Good Guys Always Taken, Gay, Dead, Or Available? | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
- “When you finally do come across one of the good guys out there, why does it always turn out that he’s either taken, gay, dead, or available?” Via Phil.
(tags: dating funny parody onion)
- “Everything is problematic” | The McGill Daily
- “Perhaps the most deeply held tenet of a certain version of anti-oppressive politics – which is by no means the only version – is that members of an oppressed group are infallible in what they say about the oppression faced by that group. … Let me give an example. A gay person is typically much better acquainted with homophobia than a straight person. Moreover, a gay person has a much greater stake in what society does about homophobia, so their view on the matter is more important. However, there is nothing about the experience of being gay in itself that enlightens a gay person about the ethics of sexual orientation. To take a dead simple case, you don’t have to hear it from a gay person to know that homosexuality is ethically just fine.”
(tags: politics feminism activism culture rationality problematic)
- Top Level Telecommunications: INCENSER, or how NSA and GCHQ are tapping internet cables
- Cornwall is the centre of GCHQ/NSA’s taps on undersea cables. This blog post puts the picture together from a bunch of sources. Via Bruce Schneier.
(tags: gchq cornwall cable interception nsa undersea)
- “The Culture represents the place we might hope to get to” | MetaFilter
- Mefi’s discussion of the (previously linked) recently published interview with Iain M Banks (RIP). It’s good.
(tags: metafilter iain-m-banks culture sci-fi sf science-fiction discussion)
- GCHQ’s ‘jihad on tech firms’ can only fail | Technology | The Guardian
- Blaming Facebook for Lee Rigby’s murder will only lead to a breakdown in the relationship between the police and tech companies, says Ross Anderson.
(tags: gchq facebook terrorism security lee-rigby ross-anderson)
- NSA files decoded: Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations explained | World news | theguardian.com
- The Guardian’s summary of the story so far. Nicely presented.
(tags: politics snowden nsa surveillance encryption guardian privacy edward-snowden government gchq)
- Attenborrowed
- David Attenborough’s commentary on the mating habits of pop stars on MTV. “Spectacular wattles”. Via jwz.
(tags: mtv twerking nature miley-cyrus funny documentary robin-thicke david-attenborough)
- The Right Match: A Short Documentary – YouTube
- “Drs. Dorry Segev and Sommer Gentry are innovative researchers who connect the complexities of mathematics with the intricacies of organ transplantation.” They came up with using graph theory and integer programming to match up reciprocal kidney donors (that is, where someone wants to donate to their family member but they aren’t compatible, so they swap with another incompatible pair). These guys are also swing dancers, so this came via /r/SwingDancing.
(tags: transplant graph lindyhop swing medicine kidney mathematics science)
- The mandatory tweets of the self-righteous vacillating centrist stats bore: a user’s guide – Telegraph Blogs
- "Sit back with a look of superiority on your face." Tee hee. I think I’ve probably used some of these (though not on Twitter of course, that’s for twits).
(tags: argument twitter funny)
- A plea for politeness; or, a call for kindness | Slave of the Passions
- "politeness is something you owe to me not in virtue of my natural superiority over you, but in virtue of our equality. You should be polite to me, not in deference to my authority, but in recognition of our shared humanity, according to which I, like you, am a human being with feelings, weaknesses and frustrations; I am vulnerable and capable of being hurt, just as you are." But are people who are systematically better off than others as vulnerable?
(tags: argument politeness privilege philosophy)
- Feds Threaten To Arrest Lavabit Founder For Shutting Down His Service | Techdirt
- If you shut down your email service rather than giving the US government a back door, they’ll threaten to arrest you.
(tags: law politics nsa email encryption privacy lavabit)
- Glenn Greenwald’s partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours
- "David Miranda, partner of Guardian interviewer of whistleblower Edward Snowden, questioned under Terrorism Act." This is why we don’t permit laws which allow people to be held for long periods without charge, even if the laws are ostensibly about fighting "terrorism". There’s no way that the UK authorities can seriously think Miranda is a terrorist. Via Metafilter, where they’re speculating that the US and UK are spooked because they don’t know what Snowden has actually got.
(tags: law politics terrorism nsa spying heathrow privacy edward-snowden glenn-greenwald gchq)
- Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation
- "I am an independent Q.C. and not part of the government machine. I am tasked with reviewing the operation of the United Kingdom’s anti-terrorism laws. Where I am critical, I recommend change. My reports and recommendations are submitted to ministers and laid before Parliament." Interesting blog posts and reports on the police use of their anti-terrorism powers.
(tags: law politics terrorism police)
