Much to read and think about regarding Ferguson. The best place to start is Today In Tabs.

Do you like Swedish pop? Of course, there is much more Swedish pop that the article doesn't mention.

Well worth getting your ears around is 'A Girl's Own Story', this week's BBC Radio 4 documentary (direct MP3 link, 27MB). It covers topics close to my heart such as Riot Grrl and the Internet not being an entirely terrifying place populated by predators but actually a pretty damn good thing. It goes away in three days, so get listening.

I missed this nice profile of Megan Amram in the Guardian. Entirely worth reading for this quote about Jenny McCarthy alone:

“Ladies, if this Jenny McCarthy stuff teaches you anything, it’s that all anyone wants to do is listen to a hot blonde tell them exactly what to do and how to think. Just keep on keeping your body tight, gals, and you can basically make up any sort of science you want!!

• @meganamram on Twitter

In Octopus Raft updates, you can now virtually fly through your skyscrapers of cash. Now who wouldn't want to do that?

Along similar lines, aim-to-please employees are now a real, and rather silly, thing.

Eye Candy

The Best Album Covers Of 2014

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Untereisboot, Maria Merian's butterflies, stray dog trekking, alcohol-addled speech and how many calories?

Finally, 'Yes, People Will Strip To Their Underwear And Wait Outside In The Cold For Free Stuff'

Yours, @loughlin

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An earlier version of this column was published in error. That version included what purported to be an interview that Kanye West gave to a Chicago radio station in which he compared his own derrière to that of his wife, Kim Kardashian. Mr. West’s quotes were taken, without attribution, from the satirical website The Daily Currant. There is no radio station WGYN in Chicago; the interview was fictitious, and should not have been included in the column.

Naughty New York Times. Always attribute …

There is a veritable universe of unsold Samsung Galaxy Fives out there. This could be a positive as it turns out your phone may actually be KILLING you.

Here's a marvellous rewrite of 'Barbie Computer Engineer' in which Ken spends more time on his hair than Barbie does. You can also roll your own remix here.

This War Of Mine is a rather different war game, not the sort that GamerGators are interested in preserving presumably. Speaking of that ongoing trainwreck, there is some live sea-lioning happening in this Metafilter thread. Fascinating.

Libertarian Fantasy Corner

Underwater city plans proceeding. 'One Day I Will Die On Mars'

Eye Candy

Your face on Facebook, Sterling Crispin

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Feral Disneyland cats, thirty least influential people, unhappy families, big-breasted turkeys and the Royal Order of the Rug.

Finally, here are some truly indispensable food and drink related tips and tricks, sometimes known as life hacks by the Internet 🙂

Yours, @loughlin

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(Subject line courtesy of DisapprovalLook.com)

From Paul Reuter through to John Reith, at the BBC, the pioneers of journalism were also pioneers of communications technology. Today however we have reached a point of transition where news spaces are no longer owned by newsmakers. The press is no longer in charge of the free press and has lost control of the main conduits through which stories reach audiences. The public sphere is now operated by a small number of private companies, based in Silicon Valley.

Emily Bell on Silicon Valley and journalism. This could be dismissed simply as journalism’s unease with a shifting of power, but it’s more significant than that. Accountability is important and Silicon Valley firms don’t have a particularly strong track record on that.

• ‘In The Trenches of the Facebook Election’

Here are some grown up journalists pretending to be teenagers. I think it is some kind of arch in-joke. It might just be stupid though.

Good writing in Gawker from Kelly Conaboy on oversharing online:
‘This Kid Just Died VIDEO: Grief Porn Enters the Facebook Era’

It turns out that despite all the ill-informed and mandatory outrage over the latest Grand Theft Auto title, video games aren’t melting children’s brains.

Red Red Wine

The new weapon of choice for the discerning disgruntled soccer fan. Thanks to climate change these fans will soon be able to source their missiles locally.

Eye Candy

Kerby Rosanes

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

A bus that runs on poop, searching for snow leopards, the secret life of string cheese, early web battles and teddy bear mugshots.

Finally, watch Paul O’Connell pick up one Australian and use him to knock another Australian over. On an endless loop.

Yours, @loughlin

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Welcome, reader. Are you reading this on a tablet or a phone? You're probably spending more time gawping at it each day than the idiot box in the corner. Now that's progress. Clap along with Shia up there.

The Vice empire has deployed Terraform, a "new home for future fiction". Definitely worth keeping an eye on if that's your sort of thing.

Also in Vice, Emily Gould wants everyone to Leave Jonathan Franzen Alone. As if that's likely to happen.

“John Franzen of Manhattan
Ance lived in Bellygan,
And stole King Malcolm’s daughter,
The King of fair Scotland.
He beats her, he binds her,
He lays her on a band;
And every day he dings her
With a bright silver wand
Like Julian the Roman
He’s one that fears no man.
It’s said there’s ane predestinate
To be his mortal foe;
But that ane is yet unborn
And lang may it be so.”

Steve Albini is relatively happy about the music industry. Should we all be concerned?

Thoughtful Games

There are a few great pieces in the New Yorker about the sorts of games that still don't get mentioned enough outside niche game publications.

the council believed that a video game offered a chance to share the community’s stories and culture with new audiences around the world. “Our stories feature strong characters, fascinating settings, and are filled with wisdom and learning that address universal human themes. We believe they can travel.

Could A Video Game Help To Preserve Inuit Culture? | Never Alone

In Ether One, I found that the distance between these seemingly incompatible worlds lessened just a little. Even though I couldn’t quite forget myself inside its artifice, it was comforting to have the space to try.

Ether One: The Video Game That Tries To Simulate Dementia

YRSHIT

Introducing a new occasional feature, You Really Should Have Ignored This, which aims to bring you the very best stories that you just couldn't look away from, even though you thought you knew better. Today in YRSHIT, Fine Gael TD Noel 'ISIS Situation' Coonan. Here he is cutting loose in Dáil Éireann. Here is the transcript, for completeness.

• Bonus: How ISIS corporatized Terror. Is this what Deputy Coonan was talking about?

Eye Candy

Super Flemish

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Bot hunters, French kitchen culture, oven payout, ten Mike Nichols trailers and Dorito looting.

Finally, have a listen to The Flying Teapot, the 1973 album from the endearingly bonkers Gong. This is Radio Gnome Invisible.

Yours weekendingly, @loughlin

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The real difference between state surveillance programs and techbro surveillance programs? It's all in the names. The former are usually fairly innocuous-sounding: ECHELON, PRISM etc. The latter could have been thought up by 15 year old gamers, drunk on their own wild power – "look upon my GOD VIEW and despair, puny mortals!"

Five A Day

Everybody wants to buy organic. Nobody has the faintest idea what that means. Nestle to the rescue with their exercise in a bottle thing?

This may all be immaterial, because it looks like your health and fitness apps and various devices will ultimately betray you in court.

One A Day

It's the new thing that's not that new at all. this.cm lets users post one story a day. meh.com offers one product a day for sale.

Early Christmas Gift Klaxon

Get your loved ones the Good Web Bundle. Full access to five of the greatest things on the web for half the usual price. It's what the web should be, and still can be. Anil Dash explains it better than I can.

I see a bunch of sites where instead of women getting harassed, women are founders. I see a web where people are having fun with each other, while they're goofing off during their lunch hour. I see the web we'll curl up with when we're stuck at our parents' house at Thanksgiving and can't stand listening to the TV blasting anymore.

Eye Candy

Cities On Cliffs

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Sad compliant robot, mammoth resurrection, food porn addiction, Yelp prison reviews and the museum of selfies

Finally, Wait, What Does Your Startup Do?

@loughlin

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Today is a pretty damn good day for headlines. 'Uber Has An Asshole Problem', 'Barbie Fucks It Up Again' and 'Got Milk? Might Not Be Doing You Much Good' are all standouts and relevant to my interests.

Continuing on, 'Anonymous Takes On The Ku Klux Klan', 'Artist 3D Prints the World’s Smallest Sculptures. Loses Them.' and 'San Francisco’s New Dog Mayor Calls For Mandatory Belly Rubs' are, I'm sure you'll agree, also all very strong headlines deserving mention.

Anyway, programmers have agents now and we all remember how well that worked out the last time, right?

Take the hassle out of sexting with Flirtmoji. Follow how 2 sext on Twitter for lovingly pre-crafted sexts.

If you have a few more minutes to spare, the YouGov profiler provides all kinds of fun opportunities. Bob Geldof fans are the people who still use Internet Explorer.

Eye Candy

Kilian Schönberger

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Word of the year, religious Vader, bear-boganning, embarassing tweets revealed and 8chan is completely horrible

Finally, today's mix is Weighted Eyelids by Dan Bodan. I don't advise listening to this whilst falling asleep, despite what Dan says.

@loughlin

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Why spend three grand on a mass manufactured telepresence robot? Locally grown artisianal telepresence solution iPad On A FaceTM brings telepresence doubling to you!

Brought to you by the amazing Stupid Projects From The Stupid Hackathon. Even more Stupid Projects.

It looked like a cross between social media and talk radio, if talk radio had a visual component where a bunch of digital characters shoot one another. And as a form of entertainment, it seemed perfectly suited to a world where people jump around browser windows, watching a video in one, checking Facebook in another.

It seems to be that time where there are a few pieces about professional video gaming doing the rounds. I have yet to figure out why this happens every few months, or whether it’s becoming more frequent, considering that this has been a ‘thing’ for a considerable number of years now. The New Yorker does it well, not surprisingly. The New York Times can’t resist rolling out a few of the traditional cliches but comes up with a good profile piece. Ultimate takeaway: it’s just another job.

The NYT also has a piece on the improbable success of John Oliver. The shorter version of this article would read “perfect for YouTube”.

Remaining with cyclical thinkpieces, ‘The Web is Dying!’ In cyclical response pieces, ‘No it isn’t!’

This is a wearable that will definitely be a success.

Man wears the same suit for a year. Nothing happens.

Whilst reading this piece about Facebook at Work, bear in mind that Facebook has been announcing something similar to Facebook at Work on a fairly regular basis for quite some time now.

Eye Candy

Porcelain Fractal Sculptures

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Gordon Ramsay’s table booking nightmares, Beards of Time, thieving squirrel, scam artist to clean up Ebola and emoji evolution.

Finally, ‘Biblical Verses Where “Philistines” Are Replaced With “Haters”‘.

@loughlin

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First, a #ShirtStorm update!

Serial. Serial Serial Serial.

It's the golden days of radio all over again and the salvation of the content 'industry' or something. Serial

I finally caught up with the long form This American Life-birthed podcast over the weekend. It's very well crafted and captivating. I'm hooked. Of course, I'm not the only one.

Before Serial was international news, Reddit was rapidly on the case. Reddit being Reddit, some people promptly set about attempting to doxx the characters in the story. The admins of the Reddit board attempted to stop this and seem to have been mostly successful. That was until the Daily Mail decided that it was in the public interest for it to do so after the latest episode. You stay classy, Daily Mail.

• Podcast about the podcast, from the AV Club
• Parodies of the podcast
• Puns about the podcast

In other serious online content news, both The Onion and Funny Or Die are up for sale.

Worth Pondering

Eye Candy

Auroras

Totally Confused

Bread, burgers, bros, bullets and just plain ol' bad.

Sportsing Video Corner: The Bad And The Good

The FIFA Files. Manuel Neuer

Finally, do you compulsively self-edit as you type? This tool will probably do one of two things for you: help solve this problem or drive you demented. You have been warned.

@loughlin

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It seems parts of the Internet experienced a sudden outbreak of adlessness on Wednesday. I can't say I noticed because cough Adblock, but interesting nonetheless.

In comet updates, the silly bearded scientist attempted to make the comet landing all about his silly sexist shirt. Not really, but as an antidote to that silliness, here's This Is What A Scientist Looks Like

Without diving too far back into the mess that is GamerGate, here's a guy that people hate a lot more than the silly scientist, and rightly so.

Back In The Real World

More than four hundred people have visited a health centre for screening for blood-borne viruses after 22,000 dental patients were recalled … Doug Black, medical director for NHS England in Nottinghamshire, said it was the "largest recall in NHS history".

Dentist Desmond D'Mello investigation: Screening for blood-borne viruses begins

• The Dirty History of Doctor's Hands
  (This is from a lovely-looking new quarterly called Method.)

Paul Mason of Channel 4 has a superb rant about banks and their ongoing misdemeanours here.

Worth Pondering

Eye Candy

A Beijing Facelift

Totally Confused

Aging boy band members, 'Let It Goat', always-clean lettuce, chainsaw in pants and lumbersexuals.

Finally, make your Wikipedia browsing much slicker with WikiWand. Seriously, it's great and will make you read even more Wikipedia articles that are not immediately relevant to your interests than ever before.

Yours weekendingly, @loughlin

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Well done primates. The best thing to come out of humans landing a robot on a comet so far is this adorable video of Rosetta and Philae.

• Also, the comet sings

Internets

YouTube launches its paid music service. Amazingly, Ireland is one of the first countries it is being rolled out to. Twitter can silence obnoxious eejits if they want to, but is this the way they should go about it? Meanwhile, Twitter seems to have forgotten that they used to provide Google with their firehose and tweets showed up in Google real-time search results.

General techbros

The meritocratic glow of Silicon Valley is so frustrating. It creates a pass for people who use things like the "culture" filter. What's the culture filter? An easy excuse to be prejudiced. It's culture bias, like [not hiring someone] because they didn't like Animal Collective as much as you do? Seriously.

Race in Silicon Valley

Could we possibly see a new category of awards in games development, Best Glitches? Some of these from Assassin's Creed Unity are the stuff of nightmares.

Worth Pondering

Pedantry alert. This is not a selfie.

Eye Candy

Double exposures by Julia Fullerton Batten

Totally Confused

3D print yourself for love, a computer that writes folk music, the other side of Internet fame, women not as creepy as men and Orwellian

Finally, vote for Steph Roche in FIFA's Puskas awards if you're so inclined. A nation once again!

Yours as always, @loughlin

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