Month: November 2017
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London's Transport Chief Can't Do Early Meetings As She Uses Southern Rail
London's Deputy Mayor for Transport avoids early morning meetings because she relies on Southern Rail to get into the office.
Val Shawcross' office was trying to set up a meeting and in an email wrote: "Val actually is a morning person but has to use Southern trains to get in to the office so … -
Slaughterbots
Stop Autonomous Weapons -
Review of Mission Burrito
This review of Mission Burrito originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan. Mission Burrito, 2 King Edward St, Oxford OX1 4HS, United Kingdom. Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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Review of
This review of originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan. , . Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Pleasant park with a better-than-average selection of play equipment suitable for children of all ages and a large field for games/sports.
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I see you've changed your Twitter handle, @librarybilkent! Your site still looks like you've #stolen the #webdesign from @bodleianlibs, though (and changed the license to a #CreativeCommons one, although the fact you forgot to change the #GoogleAnalytics ID is a giveaway...).
RT https://twitter.com/scatmandan/status/909799082616647684 -
In 1973, I invented a "girly drink" called Baileys
My dinner-party party piece for many years was to say, “Well, actually, I invented Baileys. You know, Baileys Irish Cream. I did that back in 1973.”
If one of the unfortunate listening group is a woman – and this is based on actual past experience - she is likely to respond something like … -
"I Forgot My PIN": An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin
In January 2016, I spent $3,000 to buy 7.4 bitcoins. At the time, it seemed an entirely worthwhile thing to do. I had recently started working as a research director at the Institute for the Future’s Blockchain Futures Lab, and I wanted firsthand experience with bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that uses a blockchain to record transactions …
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The First Time I Met Americans
HANOI, Vietnam — I first visited the United States in the summer of 1998, when I was invited to attend a literary conference in Montana with four other Vietnamese writers. We flew from Hanoi to Taiwan to Los Angeles. As we crossed the Pacific Ocean, passing through many time zones, I buried myself in … -
The Web began dying in 2014, here's how
Before the year 2014, there were many people using Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Today, there are still many people using services from those three tech giants (respectively, GOOG, FB, AMZN). Not much has changed, and quite literally the user interface and features on those sites has remained mostly untouched. However, the underlying dynamics of power …
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Welcome To Nauru, The Most Corrupt Country You've Never Heard Of
Nestled in a cluster of islands in the central Pacific Ocean is Nauru, a small country with a totally insane story.
In 1980, the island nation was considered the wealthiest nation on the planet; in 2017, BusinessTech listed it as one of the five poorest countries in the world.
This is a story of a country that journeyed … -
An Extremely Close Reading of Pop Song Duets
MOST SONGS give you only one perspective: She will always love you. Billie Jean was not his lover. You can check out of “Hotel California” but you can never leave.
But popular music history is studded with the occasional duet that serves more of a purpose than simply an excuse for the … -
Introduction (to SMAC)
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri[1] (which we fondly refer to here as SMAC, both as an acronym and in reference to its potent addictive properties) opens in an odd way for a science fiction game. Most such games open with spaceships, star travel, or some futuristic technology. They seek to hook the imagination. But our game begins much more …
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Starring to feel like #Christmas! It's that time of the year when I finally run out of goose fat from LAST Christmas.
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Carry Fire
"My dad'd love this!" Dan thinks as he listens to Robert Plant's new album, in the first case of him momentarily-forgetting-his-dad's-death in almost a year. It's a pretty good album, regardless.
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Found GLTHEB08 Mutiny on the Bounty
This checkin to GLTHEB08 Mutiny on the Bounty reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Found easily this morning while on the way to a museums conference at the Imperial War Museum (because no trip to London is complete without a geocache being found!). Wasn't exactly where the hint seems to …