Chilcot

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Me in 2004: “But that’s what he deserves: to fall from grace, spectacularly, hugely, humiliatingly, with all his self-delusions laid bare.”

We knew all this years ago of course. Again, me in 2004:

how come no-one has pointed out the most damning fact to come to light in the whole Hutton inquiry, namely this: Downing Street sought to make the dossier as strong as possible in order to garner support for the war. The only conclusion one can reach from this is that they had already decided to go to war on grounds other than WMDs. If they already had enough evidence of WMDs to go to war, they would not have needed to strengthen the dossier.

My rage against Tony Blair burns white-hot as always and the Chilcot report gives me hope: not that he will answer to his crimes (oh how I wish) but that the way the world talks about Blair will finally change. Because despite everything, he has been treated with something like reverence by media and political elites ever since he stepped away from the role of PM.

Maybe this is what it takes, then, to convince the powerful and mighty and wise that they were obviously foolish all along: seven years of careful work producing millions of considered words. How long, one wonders, would the report need to be for the courtiers to accept the Emperor really did have no clothes?

—

Me, right after the Glasgow march against the war in February 2003:

The ball, I feel, is in Tony Blair’s court – and there is every sign he is unmoved by the display of doubt in the drive to war. This will have immense political consequences, and soon.

“soon”!

Infrequent linky

So regular linky readers will have noticed my frequency of posting has decreased. I’ve decided not to fight this tendency, so for the time being linky will be coming only on an occasional basis. Several reasons:

Declining readership: I threw in some basic stat counters when I did my Buffy series, and readership here is showing a slow but steady decline. I don’t particularly care – but this is, I think, part of a general disengagement with blogs all over the internet as social media and the app ecology get more settled in place. It isn’t a dealbreaker for me, but it doesn’t help…

Link roundups are like old-fashioned dad don’t you know anything: As Twitter and Facebook become ever more essential to online life, it is increasingly clear that a weekly link roundup is old-fashioned. Often I’ve put a link in the post draft on Monday, seen it blow up on Wednesday, and by Friday it’s old news. Links get shared fast and individually! And while I do believe there is a role for curation (I love the Nextdraft newsletter which is delivers smart linky three times a week), I don’t think I do it well enough to stand against the trend. But you know what? I don’t particularly care about this one either.

My ipad: the real driver of change, then? It’s my ipad. Because over the last year I have increasingly moved my casual internet use on to my trusty old ipad 2. This beast is now quite old in computing terms, but it’s chugging along as well as ever. (I am impressed, Apple!) It is now more pleasant than the laptop for Facebook and Twitter and Plus and Gmail, which is most of my internet activity right now. I can even do some solid productivity on it in google docs or dedicated apps like celtx and Final Draft. (And Scrivener for iOS is coming!) But one thing it does not do well is task switching. And task switching is the fundamental requirement for assembling a linky post. When I see a link I want to grab the URL and paste it into a draft linky post, or in some intermediary spot if possible. But the ipad just strugggggles with this. I hope & trust newer ipads do it better, but I’m not looking to upgrade until I’m forced to.

So. That’s the score.

Anyway, here’s the partial draft that’s been sitting here for a month now:

“The first “job” today’s kids have to answer is, what the hell am I going to do that anyone is willing to pay me for? And each kid, increasingly, is expected to answer this alone as an individual. When poor or less-educated people do this, its called “hustling” but when it trickles upwards to the children of the 1%, its our national economic plan.” Entrepreneurship means I give up (via Allen Varney)

Fully appreciating culture without appropriation: a guide in 15 steps (I saw this all over the place)

The Grim Test, a method for evaluating published research for shady manipulations (via Michael R)

The first two phone book volumes of Cerebus are available in PDF for free download! (I’ve tried three times but the download has failed each time. Maybe you’ll have more luck?)

And, just yesterday, via Pearce and already turning up everywhere else because that’s how these things work: Disney Princesses as cats as sharks

Rapper’s De-Linky

Lots going on but I’ll quickly share some linky goodness:

Via Pearce – an excellent ten-minute breakdown on how rappers execute rhyme and wordplay. Great for anyone interested in words and rhythm – poets & English teachers will like this!

And related: Hamilton and the glory of language

“America’s economic illness has a name: financialization. It’s an academic term for the trend by which Wall Street and its methods have come to reign supreme in America, permeating not just the financial industry but also much of American business.” From Time: “American Capitalism’s Great Crisis

Via Rachel B – can you guess the correlation?

The Atlantic has an interesting interview about how much of our experience of reality is illusory. There’s not enough here to be convincing, but I’m curious to know more.

Also from the Atlantic, here’s the latest bout of Conor Friedersdorf “university students are coddled entitled milliennials” pearl clutching, linked so I can hate-read it later: The perils of writing a provocative email at Yale.

Via David R, how the myth of Irish slaves became a favourite meme for racists

Film Crit Hulk writes some fascinating stuff about new (online) media channels and the future of TV. Features the McElroy brothers, whose D&D podcast The Adventure Zone is reliably entertaining – the Alligator put me on to that one last January.

This NYT account of the aspiring novelist who became Obama’s foreign policy guru really explains a lot about the Obama administration. I figure this guy would not have fit in with any other President in recent memory, and wouldn’t work with any of the candidates for the office either. Fascinating. West Wing enthusiasts are particularly recommended to read this.

And finally, Hobbes & Me

Stone Junk Linky

Why are the penises on ancient statues so small?

Via Aaron, credits to Empire Strikes Back in the style of a James Bond movie.

Star Wars – Episode V "The Empire Strikes Back" Homage (Title Sequence) from KROFL on Vimeo.

Can someone explain to me how the heck this is possible? Elaborate 3D animations the size of an animated GIF?

The Atlantic on the growing divide between the Game of Thrones novels and TV show.

Via Johnnie: a 90-minute chat show where host Samm Levine (one of the geeks from TV’s Freaks & Geeks) interviews John Francis Daley (another of the geeks from TV’s Freaks & Geeks). I haven’t watched this yet!

Via d3vo – a ten-minute science show that does a pretty good explainer on why social psychology is in trouble, and what it has to do with yummy tasty cookies. There’s waaay more to talk about, but this is a good starting point.

And finally, via Lew, and I’m gonna borrow his selection of pullquote: I have no deeper explanation for why human females can dissolve rocks with our genitals. It simply is.

Teen Linky

via Evie: Stop telling me our relationship with our teens should suck. Our culture really loves to talk about how awful teens are. This is a necessary corrective.

Nonverbal autistic woman Carly Fleischmann launches her talk show interviewing a very game, and very lovely, Channing Tatum.

You’ve watched that Radiohead music vid that does a 70s horror movie in kids puppet format, right?

The Washington Post digs into the insult “egg”, which is hot on twitter right now. Here in NZ it has a long and proud history. You egg.

Via d3vo, river rockets of the Soviet space age. These look like they fell out of a classic Dan Dare strip!

And finally, this great blogpost starts with a sexist controversy surrounding a recent Wonder Woman comic book, and ends up surveying the ways toxic masculinity is messing up whole swathes of pop culture appreciation. (Even Monkees fandom for pete tork’s sake.)

Plastic Linky

I loved this edition of Manfeels Park. Hee hee! (Remember that all the dialogue is drawn from real exchanges online, with source link below the comic!)

Via Gareth: the voices of Pinky & the Brain read… Pulp Fiction. (Just one scene!)

(and via Cyrus, a highly entertaining script reading of The Matrix)

Great personal story: I was a Men’s Rights Activist.

Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) has been sharing shooting script pages from Star Wars, and there’s stuff I haven’t heard of before – like how Obi Wan was meant to survive the Death Star! This must have been changed on set!

Insanely huge Lego Star Destroyer

Original Pope of this blog (and upcoming contestant on Mastermind) David Ritchie discovered io9 shamelessly ripping off our “Pantheon of Plastic” idea: which actors played the most characters who got action figures?

And finally, via Pearce, from the NYT, the battle over the Sea Monkey fortune. Even more interesting than it sounds.

Remaking ANZAC Day

Every year on April 25, New Zealand (and Australia but I’m talking NZ here) marks ANZAC Day, which commemorates soldiers who fell in wars great and small. Particularly it remembers the horrific slaughter at Gallipoli in World War I, which is often seen as the moment where NZ became a nation.

It is always a contested event: the nationalism and militarism of the day are obvious, and there is a fundamental ambiguity over whether the solemn ceremonies deplore the violence, or strengthen the narrative that it was necessary. But each year, attempts to complicate the mythology of ANZAC day are met with furious resistance by a populace who simply want to remember their relatives from previous generations who died doing their best in a horrid distant war, and to pray that no such horror ever comes again. The talkback radio phones ring hot decrying the insensivity of protesters.

This year, two fresh threads in this critique have emerged that seem fruitful as ways to attack the nationalist and militarist mythmaking around the day but seem to have avoided this fierce backlash.

First, the idea of explicitly expanding ANZAC Day’s commemorations to include the wars within New Zealand (commonly known as the Māori Land Wars). The idea is covered beautifully by Toby Morris’s latest Pencilsword comic strip, “Lest We Forget“.

Second, a set of guerrilla sculptures erected around Wellington showing a soldier receiving Field Punishment Number 1, a brutal punishment meted out to pacifists who refused to fight. Public opinion is generally in agreement now that this is a blemish on our past. Protest group “Peace Action Wellington”, normally being tarred and feathered at this time of year for its protest actions, is this time being written about with something approaching admiration in the daily paper, and the comment section as I write is solidly in favour of the sculptures.

Great work on both accounts. I look forward to these threads being expanded further in years to come.

Dangerous Linky

Dangerous Treasures: A story of Lovecraftian horror, frantic action, and deepweb forum culture, by the lovely folks at Strange Company. (9 minute short film.)

My friend Kitty is featured in Woman builds herself new career… with Lego

via d3vo, the many forgotten benefits of segmented sleep

Via Alastair, four games that tell great stories, and how they do it

And the Humble Bundle right now has Telltale Games’ back catalogue, including the astonishing Walking Dead Season One as just part of their $1 set!!

And finally, Billy calls this a “really remarkable Wikipedia entry” and I have to agree. Every paragraph in the early going has a wild new idea in it. Then it gets even more densely packed with ingenuity. Read it! Jonathon Keats

The problem with men

This has been an unpleasant week; by which I mean I have been reminded many times that for women, every week is an unpleasant week. All this came across my screen.

The dark side of Guardian comments
“New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.”

The women abandoned to their online abusers
On the internet, if I ever complain and say; ‘This has happened, I’m sick of it’, people say; ‘You’re on the internet, what do you expect?’
“There’s no support for women at all, from the police or anyone else.”

This horrifying and newly trendy online harasment tactic is ruining careers
“Both 8chan and Kotaku in Action regularly crowdsource research into the histories of private individuals who’ve done little more than post about feminism on social media.”

I will come forward
How a prominent New Zealand music identity conducted a troubling series of relationships with young women, including girls as young as 12.

Tabletop Gaming has a White Male Terrorism Problem
“I know that if I speak out against the abuses myself and my friends have suffered as a result of our participation in the “friendly gaming community” I can expect to be silenced with extreme prejudice.”

But at least there was also, in response to that last one:

For good men to see nothing
I have a list of things you can do.

Book Thief Linky

Via many people, this fascinating story of some writers who discovered their novels had been copied is a cracking tale in its own right – I’m surprised this hasn’t happened more often to be honest.

A nice little article on the threat posed by oversensitive political correctness in higher education: there isn’t one. (via Hamish C).

1990 Nirvana concert in a tiny goth club. Choice. (via DM)

Alasdair gave the much-maligned Batman vs Superman a five-star review, and it’s a great read. (NB: he also gave it a four-star review.)

A reappraisal of Event Horizon – I saw it in the cinema and I remember really liking it, despite the reliance on jump scares and loud noises. The comments reveal how it continues to divide people – about 50/50 “thank you someone said it” vs. “you are bonkers it sucks”.

Trainwreck fans who’ve been missing gamergate will be delighted to hear there’s a new incredibly dumb online gaming ragefest targeted, in what is surely just one more coincidence in a long line of them, at yet another woman. This one’s about (“about”) game writing, which is something I do and get paid real human dollars for, so I feel I can say with at least some authority that there is no merit whatsoever to the alleged reason for this ragestorm. Maybe I’ll get frustrated enough to blog about it. (NO morgue no)

This 9-year-old crime reporter doesn’t care what anyone says. She rules.

Charts about tea, via Norman C.

I read this on Salon by d3vo suggested it as linky worthy: the end of the gig economy, or, why Uber isn’t transforming everything else after all.

And finally, also via d3vo: a writing app that encourages productivity in an unusual way: if you stop typing, it deletes all your work.