Interesting Links for 14-9-2011

[andrewducker]

• UK party leaders back global gay rights campaign
  (tags: lgbt uk politics)
• Text Speak from the 1890s
  (tags: text communication history technology)
• The Rules of Productivity. Download the PDF, and pass it to your manager
  (tags: psychology business software games productivity development work efficiency)
• Now we have to rely on the right to fight the feral rich
  (tags: politics inequality UK banks income)
• xkcd Wedding Cake
  (tags: xkcd wedding cake)
• You are not a single entity, you are a parliament of parliaments
  (tags: comic funny personality)
• Amazing, beautiful, mysterious paper sculptures left around Edinburgh's libraries and museums.
  (tags: books sculpture libraries paper edinburgh library art)
• Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA
  (tags: writing publishing lgbt fiction books sexuality literature)
• This is where Operation Enduring Safety (i.e. the TSA) is going
  (tags: securirt terrorism funny comic)
• Employees Can't Be Fired for Complaining About Their Job on Facebook, Judge Says
  (tags: law Facebook work usa)
• You just shared a link. How long will people pay attention?
  (tags: bitly links attention internet twitter facebook web2.0)
• The situation in Northern Ireland continues to improve, but you won't read about it in the papers.
  (tags: NorthernIreland ireland politics religion media newspapers)

Comments

Telegraph text-speak

[charleysjob.livejournal.com]

I had noticed that a few months ago - in "The Autobiography of Mark Twain" they include exact transcripts of telegraph messages from his papers; and there's a lot of text-style abbreviation. "U" "Pls" "4" etc. (I assume you paid based on length?)

I wonder if there were 1890s grammar-nazis whining about the inevitable demise of the English language too?

Re: Telegraph text-speak

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

At least according to the joke about the Indian name, you paid by word count... but letter count makes sense too.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

There may be something wrong with the SMBC links today.

[andrewducker]

On a moral level?

They're both working fine for me. What problem are you encountering?

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see the problem. In Firefox and Chrome, both produce a "save file" dialog. In IE I get a page - "Forbidden Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Blocked".

Problem Exists Between Workstation and Internet.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

particularly good today

[andrewducker]

Thanks!

[zz]

yeah, i think this is the first time i've looked at every single link.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> the amount of time at which this link will receive half of the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak

Whoa whoa whoa.
Either that is really badly phrased, or it's not a half-life. You don't *know* and you can't ever know how many clicks the link will EVER receive. It's quite possibly an infinite number, even if it decays to one click a week, that still adds up to infinity when you say 'ever'.

I *think* what they mean is the time it takes to half the number of clicks per minute it's getting, surely? At least that's the thing that analogous to atomic half-life.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is odd taht Labour are being so silent on this issue about the rampaging feral rich. But then I suppose there might be some embaressment because New Labour largely set them loose to run free.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

*Nod* I think they need to finish their slow reinvention before they get to say anything without being laughed out of the house. Ed probably went about as far as he could saying (was it on Newsnight? I think it was) that they had been wrong to be so famously 'intensely relaxed' about the super-rich. It's a small comfort, but it's there. Fingers crossed, eh?

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

True, true, though for every step forward Ed seems to make, there is another step backwards somewhere else. I wonder if he's fighting his own party on it.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

Liked the closing comments of the feral rich article :)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Is "feral" the new "toxic"?

[andrewducker]

Only when the new Britney album comes out.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Does this mean the party leaders will encourage gay rights and attempt to end homophobia in the UK as well, or are they going to focus on the more flagrant abuses abroad?

[andrewducker]

Well, they're talking about gay marriage at the moment, and for a Conservative-led government have been surprisingly nice about the whole thing (with a few screaming exceptions).

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I didn't just mean the government, I meant Britain in general, particularly sections of the media and sport are not always notably tolerant and accepting.

The usual example.

[andrewducker]

You said "does this mean the party leaders will encourage gay rights", so I pointed out one way they seemed to be.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Re. The Rules of Productivity, I am well and often painfully aware that on slow sleep, I am very stupid. I actually feel stupid at those times -- of not having my usual facility of putting ideas together.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

There's a Dilbert cartoon about meeting company demands for production in limited time, and the PHB suggests "have you tried sacrificing your health?"

In real life, employers want you to get a good night's sleep: they just want you to sacrifice everything except work and sleep to do it. "Were you out partying again, ha ha!?", managers joke, but they're ha ha only serious.