Scientists have been sneaking Bob Dylan lyrics into their papers for the last seventeen years.

Remember Dialup?

3G is almost as bad

Dreams To Remember

Your dreams get weirder as the night goes on.

Oireland

"I believe it is essential to have Irish staff behind the bar or on the floor because they have the personality to get on with customer. Irish staff know what is going on in Croke Park or in the rugby or what is happening around the county," said Mr Chawke.

…

The Irish Immigrant Council opposed Mr Chawke's views and pointed out that his stance was illegal.

This may backfire on Charlie Chawke. Just maybe.

The Irish Water data retention issue rumbles on.

More Irish Water issues rumble on. “You tell me one party out there who doesn’t look after their own. I don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s politics.”

• Irish Water director hired as personal driver by Minister

Internets

Growth hacking = you will pester your contacts, or else.

Facebook has another go at following users around the Web. They're also building a drone fleet to follow people around in the real world.

Instagram was unplugged in mainland China lest people see what's happening in Hong Kong. The protesters in Hong Kong are using FireChat to organise, which is interesting. FireChat doesn't have centralised servers but uses peer-to-peer WiFi and Bluetooth connections between handsets, so can't be switched off as easily. Shades of BBM and the London riots.

Tim Berners-Lee says he wants " a web where I’m not spied on, where there’s no censorship". Fingers crossed.

The Daily Show may have met its match. One does not simply walk into a One Direction joke and expect to emerge unscathed.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Everybody was 15th century fighting, using their own personal drone familiars, possessed by djinns in their pens, using teletext before the Asian Carpocalypse.

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Taylor Swift, winning the Internet, or Tumblr at least.

Play This Now

Gridland. It is Friday after all.

• Want more games? Try Steam Curator Curator, "curating curation for those who don't know which curators they want to curate their games but want someone to curate those curators."
• Twine 2 is now in beta.

Schadenfreude Klaxon

So Marc Andreessen has noticed that there are a lot of stupid start-ups floating around, doing not much that's of any use. Does sound very late 90s, doesn't it?

Finally, there are exceptions to all this. But if you're reading this, you're almost certainly not one. They are few and far between

Still Awful

Fox News, that is

Eye Candy

Crockery, cutlery and kitcheny things. Art + JavaScript = this.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

'Did he actually say that?', Dirtbag Zeus, animals on trial, a map of the introvert's heart, by an introvert and Ballmer bans iPads.

Your weekly dose of Pocket lint.

'The Human Factor'. On Flight 447, automation and cockpit culture, 12,000 words, 41 minutes.

'How We End Up Marrying The Wrong People', 3,300 words, 11 minutes.

'The Troll Slayer', New Yorker profile of Mary Beard. 6,800 words, 23 minutes.

'Welcome to Colon, Magic Capital of the World', 3,700 words, 12 minutes

'15 Lessons From 15 Years Of Blogging', 1,200 words, 4 minutes.

Finally, look at this dog.

Bon weekend!

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[image via Colossal]

Here are a few things people are likely to keep posting about on Twitter today (which will be subsequently picked up by broadcast and print media).

• Cuddlr, the cuddling app. Which, because this is the Internet, is not what people are using it for at all.
• Suitsy, the smart-casual onesie for every occasion
• iPhone 6s pantsbending. For good measure, Apple also decided to break some phones with a software update. The LAPD are on the case, thoughtfully advising people not to microwave their new phones.

Today in birthdays: Mark Hamill.

Icy

The UN Climate Change summit is on, so listen to this poem. Then discover what the latest polar bear fast food fad is.

• These fish actually have ice in their veins. Never befriend anything has ice for blood.

Techno

Samsung says auf wiedersehen to Europe for laptops and Chromebooks. Presumably to focus on making a phone that's even bigger and even bendier than anything Apple can ever make.

Today in eBay

People are selling Ello invites on eBay. Sounds like 2004 and Gmail invites.

Spoilsports that they are, eBay are refusing to let a man sell a lamp made from his amputated leg. Everybody loves lamp, surely?

Eye Candy

Chicago in the fog. Face collages.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Blizzard cancelling things is a good thing, Sesame Street vs. The Beastie Boys, thumb extenders, robot calligraphers and serious answers to stupid questions

▶ Finally, watch Will Oldham perform 'Ohio Riverboat Song' for an audience of bemused children and puppets.

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Today is National Punctuation Day in the US of A. Be careful who you correct, lest you fall victim to Muphry's Law.

• Find pedants throughout the day on #NationalPunctuationDay
• Does anyone actually type out 'dot dot dot' in messages? Seems to defeat the purpose of an ellipsis somewhat.

"The world does not need every single opinion at every single moment"

Read this interview with the oh-so wonderful, whip-smart and extremely funny Mallory Ortberg. Then, since you're already there you might as well read the rest of that issue of Kernel Mag. It's all about making the Web a better place. There's another great interview in DigiDay which discusses actual disruption in the media, rather than the buzzword-y kind.

Here are five of my favourite Ortberg humour pieces from the Toast.

• Song Lyrics Improved By Replacing Proper Nouns With Cats
• Two Medieval Monks Invent Maps
• Two Medieval Monks Invent Art
• Every Irish Novel Ever
• Dirtbag Teddy Roosevelt

History Lessons

Attempt to remove mentions of civil disobedience from history curriculum sparks civil disobedience.

The right-leaning board-members said they believe history teachers should teach nationalism, respect for authority and reverence for free markets. They should avoid teaching any historical events or acts that promote “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.

World Of Brocraft

Idiots still making apparel emblazoned with rape jokes. Someday this won't be a semi-regular occurence.

• Very tangential: Blizzard cancels Titan. After seven years of development work, though it's not clear what that actually means.

Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

Occupants of the Westboro church and Equality House have even exchanged phone numbers. Recently, when someone took all of the Equality House gay pride flags and, without their knowledge, deposited them in Westboro’s yard, Hammet’s phone beeped with a text message. “It said something like: ‘A criminal has taken your flags and put them in our yard. We have put them in your mailbox. We would like to return them to you.’”

The strangest truce in Kansas

Eye Candy

City Stills. Northern Lights

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

A bed for your smartphone, a speaker that only plays U2, a guide to spoilers, dancing traffic lights, and comedy is the new rock 'n' roll … again.

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Internets

Always surprisingly slow on the uptake, brand advertisers have finally noticed that Facebook may not be a particularly useful or trustworthy advertising platform. Why they thought this might work out otherwise is anyone's guess.

Also in Facebook news, they're back chasing their weird techno-libertarian dream of forcing their users to use their real names, for no particularly good reason.

Google has decided that it might be a good idea to stop supporting climate change deniers.

• Long, thoughtful New Yorker piece on Google's 'right to be forgotten' in Europe.

The knuckledraggers of the Internet continue to abuse women for being women.

Morkeshing

If this really is true and the cupcake bubble is over, what will PRs send to journalists for no good reason instead? Cronuts? Soup?

The Grauniad Abides

Worth Pondering

Eye candy / History Lesson

Ages of Empires. Historical map showing exactly who was beating up whom and when.

• As an aside, did you know fish and chips was a 6th century Persian invention?

Betteridge Of The Day

Does A Cancer Diagnosis Turn You Into A Better Person?

Totally Confused

Survey respondents are liars, men can't remember things, robots can be oenophiles, lasers locate lost cities and this is how you quit your job

Tune: ▶ Big Star, 'Daisy Glaze'

Sportsing Corner

Today in golfing crimes against clothing

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Aaaand we're back, though a bit later than anticipated. Silly season is over, the Dail is back in session and those who wished to have removed the U2 album from their iDevices.

To get back into the swing of things, here's a big ol' bunch of links in alphabetical order from the last few months. Contains more animals than usual for some reason.

Some thematic order will hopefully be restored over the next while 🙂

A Dark Room

Vintage text gaming, in your browser.

Bovine

The inner life of cows.

Canine

The peculiar rise and fall of Dogecoin, "a dog on a f#$!ing coin".

Downing Street

Uncooperative Saltire.

Extinct

Every single animal that became extinct in the last century.

Fish …

… play Street Fighter II: Turbo Fighting. Lots of people watched it when it was live, apparently. People are still reassuringly strange.

GIFs

GIF dance party.

Hum Hum Beep

12 hours of the ambient noise in Deckard's apartment in Blade Runner. If that's not enough hums and beeps, there's a whole playlist.

Insulating

Jean-Claude Van Dance

Yes.

Kern Your Enthusiasm

More typefaces than you could shake a Letraset at, or something.

A highlight is Jessamyn West on Comic Sans.

Losing The Run Of Themselves

Yes, the seagulls in Dublin briefly became a terrifying public menace in one public representative's mind.

image Linda Kavanagh

Menu

Here's What Every Trendy Restaurant Menu Looks Like.

Nineteen Seventies

Footballers at home. Beehives. Sideburns. Sadly only one picture is in glorious seventies luricolour.

Online Dating Ipsum

At least once a day please post your real pictures other shenanigans is pretty awesome. My lovingly curated list of ipsums.

Padlock Pedantry

QuickType

Oranges are not going to be able to see my tweets

Predictive text on steroids appears on the latest iPhones. Confusion ensues.

Recipe Blog Comments

“Due to dietary restrictions, I am only able to eat Yatzhee dice. I made the necessary substitutions, and it turned out great.”

If you haven't read everything Mallory Ortberg has written on the Toast, go and sort that out immediately.

Smallened

Jonathan Franzen thinks it's a perfectly cromulent word.

Tokyo Hero

“When I first began, people basically said, ‘Get away from me, you weirdo’,” he recalled.

U2

Who is U2? Who is U2?

Vocal

Acapella tracks on Soundcloud. If you're interested, here's one way to do it.

Warren G. Harding

Presidential proto-sexting.

XOXO

"a link blog come gloriously to life". A far cry from Bono-approved smugfests in the RDS. Just sayin'.

Yakkety-Sax

FIFA Edition.

Zoe Quinn

5 Things I Learned As The Internet's Most Hated Person. What Being Targeted By Every Troll In The World Feels Like.

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