Interesting Links for 25-06-2012
Jun. 25th, 2012 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- An example of why removing housing benefits from the under 25s is a stupid idea
- Fans and Football: relating to the mainstream
- Education: A weapon in the hands of the restless poor.
- Warren Ellis talks about the new Aaron Sorkin TV series
- Aaron Sorkin. Still a great writer - but now starting to sound horribly dated.
- The truth about where C.S. Lewis got his ideas
- The Llama identifier. KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.
- The BBC covers various questions about Scottish Independence
- The Beatles Yellow Submarine has been restored and re-released on Blu-Ray.
- Nexus 7: This Is Google’s New Nexus Tablet
- Renewables good for 80 per cent of US demand by 2050 - with no major changes in technology. Needs upgrade of the grid though.
- Fifty Shades of Grey - not actually doing bookshops any good.
I'm not actually convinced that there will be such a thing as a "bookshop" in 5 years time.
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An example of why removing housing benefits from the under 25s is a stupid idea
Date: 2012-06-25 02:43 pm (UTC)By supporting people as they get started in life and by allowing them mobility as they ease into independence, society is literally building better and more productive citizens.
It's 'penny wise and pound foolish' to eliminate or restrict those benefits.
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Date: 2012-06-27 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-27 07:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 12:07 pm (UTC)My sources also tell me that their FB friends are raving about it in rather too much detail, which tells me that a) they're clearly not ashamed of reading it b) my sources need to get new friends.
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Date: 2012-06-25 08:36 pm (UTC)Thankfully, while I have seen a few of my FB friends raving about it, none of them have gone into any great detail.
I can't help but wonder if most of the people who think people should be ashamed of being seen reading it are men who don't realise that books for women have had sex (and lots of it) in them long before Fifty Shades of Grey came around.
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Date: 2012-06-25 08:50 pm (UTC)The women who read 50 Shades are not saying "My goodness! sex, in a book? What a novel idea!". They are saying "Ooh, I like a bit of smut, is this one any good? oh well, never mind I'll try it anyway."
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Date: 2012-06-25 11:52 am (UTC)Then an article citing Gawker is in no position to throw stones about "horribly dated" is it?
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Date: 2012-06-25 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 12:38 pm (UTC)I guess everyone moved to GMail/Hotmail.
I barely know anyone who use their ISP for email any more. The few who do all started using their ISP that way back in the dawn times, and haven't needed to move since.
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Date: 2012-06-25 12:42 pm (UTC)(Myspace pages, yahoo for search, aol email addresses...)
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Date: 2012-06-25 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 03:00 pm (UTC)They used to have a lot of respect but then started making changes just for the sake of making changes and that turned off large numbers of people.
Then the writers of the articles got jealous when some of the commentators became as popular as the writers so they changed the commenting system around completely and that was a complete and total clusterfuck.
(It used to be that you had to be approved by either a current "starred" commentator or the writer before you could make a comment that would appear. To become a starred commentator with comment approval privileges you had to be given the star as a reward by one of the editors for consistently making sane comments and not being a dick. Once you were approved you could comment all you liked, but if you became abusive you were instantly banned. This made for a lot of really intelligent, respectful discussions. By moving away from this method and instead into an approval method where anyone could approve a comment, suddenly you had Fox News type people posting stuff about "homos" and racist rants against Obama and /b/ posting pictures of child porn and, of course, all the anti-abortion people posting tons of crazy comments.)
When people complained about the changes Nick Denton, the site owner, then publicly stated that he didn't care at all if people liked the site or not and that as long as he got page views through intentionally misleading link bait headlines he was happy.
People said "fuck this shit" and their numbers tanked out completely.
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Date: 2012-06-25 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-26 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 12:04 pm (UTC)I admit that I've only read part of the book, but part of it was about how good it was to get a larger perspective and something to think about besides the daily round.
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Date: 2012-06-25 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-25 02:33 pm (UTC)Not this month, but maybe once my life calms down!
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Date: 2012-06-25 02:13 pm (UTC)Average salary of freelance writer falls from £7k to £4k/year.
So if we're making it impossible for graduates to go into exceptionally badly paid work by not subsidising them isn't that a good thing? If you want to be a freelance writer you're going to have to live with your parents until middle age, perhaps you should do something a bit more useful with your time like learn plumbing even if it's not quite as much fun?
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Date: 2012-06-25 08:28 pm (UTC)I'm not actually convinced that there will be such a thing as a "bookshop" in 5 years time.
What the article doesn't explicitly say, but is patently obvious if you read between the lines, is that the bookshop in question is an independent bookshop.
Therefore, it's not the case that people aren't buying it from the independent bookshop because they're scared of being seen buying porn. No, the reason they're not buying it is because the independent bookshop isn't even trying to sell it.
Why would they not sell it? The same reason they don't bother trying to sell Harry Potter, or Dan Brown, or any other book thats sells like gangbusters - they simply cannot compete against Amazon/Waterstones/the supermarkets on price. Their price to buy would be higher than the price any of the former group sell it at. So they simply don't bother.
Believe me, the 'fear of being seen with porn' element isn't putting people off any. We have multiple copies at the library and can't keep any of them on the shelves, and people keep coming in and asking for it. They're really not bothered about any stigma attached to it. Which makes sense, really. It's not like plenty of other authors haven't been writing bonkbusters for years.
Also, from what I hear Waterstones are doing jolly good off the back of it, stocking heavily on it and still shifting most of it.
So, to sum up: "Fifty Shades of Grey - not actually doing INDEPENDENT bookshops any good. But that's simply because blockbuster books like that never do, rather than it being anything specific to Fifty Shades of Grey."
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Date: 2012-06-26 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-26 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-26 01:18 pm (UTC)