Apple's Tax Lair

The European Commission are interested in finding out more. Sounds very like a whole lot of far too little, far too late.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer couple

News Corp is threatening to sue the Mail Online. Could this be the most satisfying court case of the decade? No matter who wins and who loses, everyone else is a winner. Just think of the popcorn sales …

Yet another bad Octopus Raft idea. Or maybe we'll all be trading Bitcoin using our faces in the glorious near future. Who knows.

The Register (amongst many others) comprehensively skewers the Turing Test story. All hail Captain Cyborg for pulling off another successful publicity stunt.

The Washington Post attempts to turn its hand to trolling. 4/10 at most, must try harder.

Today's Best Betteridge

Should Adults be embarassed to read young adult books?

Totally Confused

"Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.", watch Jon Snow brood, major league eating, law enforcement via Facebook, and the shark attack.

Today's tune is 'Supernatural' by Vic Chesnutt, in honour of Penny Dreadful moving beyond being a guilty pleasure and towards something pretty damn decent.

Football Corner

Scandal? What scandal? Let's dance!

Cartoonishly evil.

---

Think you know someone who might like to receive more emails like this? Then forward this one on to them so they can read the words below. 

Hey! Want to be part of something hip and retro like a mailing list? Of course you do? Then head on over here to subscribe. I promise not to spam you or sell your email address to Facebook. Or Google. Or Twitter. Or anyone else at all.

Somewhat light today, because of laziness and busyness. Normal more extensive service will hopefully be resumed tomorrow.

RIP Rik Mayall

The grandest of grand entrances.

Generate your own political memoir, courtesy of TIME. Inspired by Hilary Clinton's memoir, so here's a guide to all Hilary Clinton conspiracy theories.

More Tomb Raider. At a guess, this must be at least the 35th outing for the franchise.

Internets

Turns out there's rather a lot of information contained in a single humble tweet. 150 points of metadata in fact, which is more than the 140 characters tweets are limited to.

Totally Confused

Timetables in the sky, how to tell if you are in a Jane Austen novel, homeopaths can practice in Belgium if they have an official qualification, which nobody does, disability awareness and Cops, Norwegian style.

Today's ambience

'The Pearl', Harold Budd & Brian Eno

Football Corner

Still rioting, striking …

---

Think you know someone who might like to receive more emails like this? Then forward this one on to them so they can read the words below. 

Hey! Want to be part of something hip and retro like a mailing list? Of course you do? Then head on over here to subscribe. I promise not to spam you or sell your email address to Facebook. Or Google. Or Twitter. Or anyone else at all.

Anniversary / A Department Of Peace

Today's the 70th anniversary of D-Day, in case you hadn't noticed. There are events to mark this in northern France and elsewhere. Yesterday an 89 year old veteran parachuted into the same field he landed in in 1944. Fair enough if that's what he wants to do. Made me feel more slovenly than usual.

Seems relevant that Paul Hardcastle's ▶'Nineteen' was number one on this day in 1985.

What happened to Robert Capa's photos? Tony Vaccaro's photos (this is a CNN playlist and it's determined to autoplay)

As usual, we don't seem to have learned all that much.

Internet and others

It begins again. Another bug in OpenSSL. Birds are still angry

The newspaper industry continues scratching its head and trying to figure out just what the big mean ol' Internet has done to it. This pretty chart attempts to explain it all in one go.

'SMS Not Allowed'

Popcorn at the ready as Vodafone publishes its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report today. What's that? Secret wires you say? Surely not.

Alignment

Irritating business jargon has been nicked wholesale from the military. Has nobody noticed this before? I'd posit that a lot of it has filtered through team sports on its way to boardrooms. Very pleased with the photo editor who chose to illustrate this story about awful business jargon with an awful business stock photo. Go you!

Game of Thrones is now HBO's most watched show ever. This means there will be an excuse to post this daily for at least the next month.

Emotional robots appear in Japan. Hello Marvin!

via Reddit

Gove must go. ► 'Harper Lee'.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused

Thirty commonly mispronounced foods, anti-drone burqas, man in gorilla suit mistaken for gorilla, Kinder egg smugglers arrested in Canada and finally this week Banecat Returns.

Football Corner

Jack Ma knows the score when it comes to football folks. Those are some very highly paid entertainers swan diving for your pleasure.

We're not investing in football, we're investing in entertainment

Alibaba buys half of Chinese soccer club for $192 million

As it's almost the weekend, here's a selection of longish reads dug out of my Pocket. No real theme this week. Enjoy.

'The Woman Behind Apple's First Icons' (2,200 words, 7 minutes)

'Jimmy Iovine: The Man with the Magic Ears' (6,500 words, 22 minutes)

A Tale of Two Londons (6,200 words, 20 minutes)

'Looking For Tom Lehrer, Comedy's Mysterious Genius' (5,500 words, 18 minutes)

'I Confronted Donald Trump In Dubai' (1,200 words, 4 minutes)

---

Think you know someone who might like to receive more emails like this? Then forward this one on to them so they can read the words below. 

Hey! Want to be part of something hip and retro like a mailing list? Of course you do? Then head on over here to subscribe. I promise not to spam you or sell your email address to Facebook. Or Google. Or Twitter. Or anyone else at all.

Four Twenty, Dude

Maureen Dowd went to Colorado and ate some pot. Half the Western world knows this by now. (If you don't know who Maureen Dowd is, maybe just skip to the next section).

Twitter was very taken with the idea of a stoned senior New York Times columnist and started riffing on this immediately. No real surprise there.

Sarah Jeong (@sarahjeong) seems to have won the unofficial competition with her opus 'Friedman's Bad Trip'. She expanded this to 'Four more New York Times columnists and Malcolm Gladwell get really high: what could possibly go wrong?' in the Guardian.

More Dowd meanies here.

If considering a career change, why not try Slate's 'Drug or Programming Language' quiz? This will help you decide whether brogrammer or Maureen Dowd is the better career path to pursue.

Obligatory Clarky Cat.

Oh No, Internet

The funniest part of this silliness is that it describes Alain de Botton as a 'noted philosopher'. He seems to be advocating spending less time looking at Twitter feeds in favour of listening to what geese and lemurs have to say. I think.

Spike Lee Likes Capitals

Also, 25 x 25 is presently beyond the lifespan of most humans …

Do The Right Thing Way

Worth Pondering

As below, stupid sexist tech industry is still stupid AND sexist.

Serious Internet

Germany announced it's going ahead with an investigation into allegations that the NSA or friends bugged Angela Merkel's phone. Get your popcorn ready.

Facebook announced it is keen to have some more younger users. Specifically tween-age young users. Not exactly right now. But soon, and for the rest of your …

Not all writing / content on the Internet may be real. Pass the smelling salts please.

Totally Confused

A Chrome extension that replaces every instance of 'The Cloud' with ' My Butt', stupid sexist tech industry is still stupid, mad cow disease on comeback trail as are desktop computers, and finally sarcasm-detecting software.

Football Corner

Maybe this time the infrastructure really isn't ready. Gulp.

---

Think you know someone who might like to receive more emails like this? Then forward this one on to them so they can read the words below. 

Hey! Want to be part of something hip and retro like a mailing list? Of course you do? Then head on over here to subscribe. I promise not to spam you or sell your email address to Facebook. Or Google. Or Twitter. Or anyone else at all.

I believe this is what the kids these days would call a localisation fail, Twitter.

Have a plagiarisation problem? Try taking the offending website down. NB, it may be easier to do this if you are a government minister.

See also: Pal Schmitt and Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg.

Some Miscellaneous Technology

World's first braille phone announced.

Glasshole preventive measures begin to appear. There is always the old-fashioned threat of physical violence, of course.

Perhaps to combat this, Google will deploy a 'fleet of satellites'.

Pro Gaming

Nobody expects the sneak booth attack.

Gangnam style

Look at what we could have done if it wasn't for Psy.

#Worth Pondering

Context.

Totally Confused

Why not treat yourself to a World War II tank; savour an insect sting; make your own Pixar film; try and open an Irish pub in a location that doesn't already have one or get married on a rickety pier?

Football Corner

Today's quote is from Phil Woosnam.

Soccer brought Bill Clinton seven years of bad luck. Eight workers have died during construction for the World Cup

---

Think you know someone who might like to receive more emails like this? Then forward this one on to them so they can read the words below.

Hey! Want to be part of something hip and retro like a mailing list? Of course you do? Then head on over here to subscribe. I promise not to spam you or sell your email address to Facebook. Or Google. Or Twitter. Or anyone else at all.

It Was Briefly Summer In Ireland

The sharks were basking in Cork, jumping elsewhere, and not on camera in this scene from 'Jaws' (starts @ 6:54)

The Mister Taytos meanwhile …

Exclamation marks are on the march! Resistance is futile! Abandon all hope!

You Got A Pretty Face, Baby

The NSA certainly thinks so.

Of course, there's nothing to be worried about, citizen. Let this put you at ease. They are just

taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information" to "implement precision targeting."

Congratulations to everyone for taking all those selfies and making this full-arsenal approach so much easier for them.

Snowden: The (inevitable) Movie.

More Internet And Such

Read How To Get Girls Into Coding. It's one of the best pieces on this topic I've seen recently, and anything that can reduce the influence of brogrammers has to be a good thing.

Meanwhile, are newsrooms showing the stirrings of some sort of growth of conscience? Or are they just scared of a lawsuit? You decide!

There is a fear amongst rights managers in newsrooms that a legal case
could seriously impact the use of UGC by news organisations in the future

You'd almost think lifting stories, images and other media from the Internet and using them uncredited was something relatively new to media outlets, wouldn't you?

There's a bit more here.

Should you ever get lost on the Internet, here are forty maps that relate to the Internet but will probably be of no use at all. I recommend using your browser's back button.

Worth Pondering

Totally Confused, Things To Do Before You Die Edition

Gender switch your name, play piano in the East River, write better release notes, sue Uruguay and be part of a collaborative Twitter poem.

Football Corner

Today's quote is the classic, from Bill Shankly.

Can't hooligan if you can't travel.

Decent Number One Slot

'Spirit In The Sky' by Doctor And The Medics was number one on this day in 1986. This was a cover version of a Norman Greenbaum track. Here's another version of the song by Bauhaus. (Well, that was convoluted.)

---

Think you know someone who might like to receive more emails like this? Then forward this one on to them so they can read the words below. 

Hey! Want to be part of something hip and retro like a mailing list? Of course you do? Then head on over here to subscribe. I promise not to spam you or sell your email address to Facebook. Or Google. Or Twitter. Or anyone else at all.