Skate Arena | Facebook - abandoned building photos of the burned-out skating rink in Red Hill, Queensland. I only went there once to a curious sort of skate/nightclub thing, maybe just a few months before the fire.
Masters of the web John Allsopp and Ethan Marcotte. Taken in front of the Agency Rainford/Web Directions HQ blackboard during a SydCSS meetup - I was just lucky the light from the window created an interesting shot; and also very lucky that people forgave the many technical flaws of the shot.
Few of my photos have had as big a response as this one :) Mostly, I love that both John and Ethan liked it.
Adam Mansbach: My year on the bestseller list - Salon.com. Worth it even just for the bit about Noni Hazelhurst: Noni is a beloved children’s television presenter who’s also managed to have a serious film career. She’s like an Australian mixture of Maria from “Sesame Street” and Meryl Streep. She represents the childhood of every Aussie and Kiwi under the age of 40. You’d be crazy to mess with her...
TALL POPPIES: Telstra Boss David Thodey Says Australia's Start-Up Problem Is More To Do With Culture Than Cash | Business Insider. There are a couple of seeds of truth in Thodey's comments, but they're drowning in bullshit. VC: even big Aussie venture capital successes like Atlassian and Bigcommerce are not successes of Australian Venture Capital - they got their money from the US. Tax: startups thrive on stock options, but Australian tax utterly cripples options. You get taxed for buying options as though they were actual assets, even though an option is nothing more than the right to buy something during a possible future exit event which will then become an asset (which is also taxed to hell and back). Culture: yes there's some truth that we don't really celebrate failure OR successes (tall poppy syndrom) the same way as Silicon Valley. There's definitely truth that Australia does not support or value innovation as a nation. For decades we've let our amazing talent and ideas go overseas - there is no shortage of Australian ingenuity, but getting support from business and government is like getting blood from stone. The anti-intellectual PM Abbott in particular is hell bent on reducing the nation to road builders - car manufacturing is out, QANTAS to be flogged off, innovation powerhouses like NICTA de-funded, NBN is shitcannned (it's sleepwalking through its death throes). It's true that it's hard to replicate Silicon Valley startup culture here - San Francisco fetishise failure and insane work practices, which we aren't quite so keen on. We like to have a life and we do expect businesses to have a business plan. If Australia wants to build a startup culture it should probably model itself on the more-conservative New York startup culture, where people expect a revenue model to back up the great idea. Australia could also show the world you don't have to work yourself into an early grave in order to innovate. Successful startups AND work/life balance - reckon we'd sort out the IT skills shortage pretty quickly.
Lean In Collection – Getty Images: We are proud to present the Lean In Collection, a library of images devoted to the powerful depiction of women, girls and the people who support them. Jointly curated by Getty Images and LeanIn.Org – the women’s empowerment nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg – the collection features over 2,500 images of female leadership in contemporary work and life.
Seminary similarity « The Australian Independent Media Network. An insight into Abbott's mind: he felt 1980s Catholicism was too concerned with "empathy". He went into the church to "recall her to her duty" and when absolutely everything was not changed to his precise satisfaction he quit in disgust. The reverse is also telling: the church seems fairly blunt in their various summaries that Abbott lacked even basic empathy and was only there to gain power.
m a rk s us s m an (Why I Hate Sportsball): And that right there, the pride, is the thing that bugs the shit out of me about “sportsball.” No one needs to know anything about sports, sure. Lord knows I don’t know much. And there is undue importance placed on sports in the culture (the world?) at large. But instead of criticism, “sportsball,” for all its smartness, is an essentially infantile reaction to all of that. It seems to really offend some people that I am both a geek and an nrl fan.
How Get Huge on Twitter: Ignore Copyright and Creative Credit: Run by two teenagers who pull in close to $44,000 a month from various YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other media properties, @HistoryInPics has amassed close to 900,000 followers since it went online in July 2013. And they’ve done it with a pretty simple idea: dig up interesting images from the past and post them with just enough caption information so followers feel they learned something. Where it gets interesting is when The Atlantic asks about sourcing. Xavier Di Petta, one of the entrepreneurial teens behind the account, says all the images they use are public domain, but even a cursory Google image search turns up some copyrighted images.
The Techtopus: How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages | PandoDaily: The secret wage-theft agreements between Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar (now owned by Disney) are described in court papers obtained by PandoDaily as “an overarching conspiracy” in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, and at times it reads like something lifted straight out of the robber baron era that produced those laws.
School ditches rules and loses bullies - National News | TVNZ: Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing trees, riding skateboards and playing bullrush during playtime, but surprisingly the students don't cause bedlam, the principal says. The school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing.
Conservatism starts with an appreciation of what is and what has been and tries to discern the good from patterns of conduct. Conservatism prefers facts to theory; practical demonstration to metaphysical abstraction, what works to what’s in the mind’s eye. To a conservative intuition is as important as reasoning; instinct as important as intellect…
- Tony Abbott, ‘Battlelines’ (2009)
...which is interesting as it captures the twisting of the words 'fact', 'theory' and 'good'. Facts to Abbott means solely 'what feels right to Abbott' (In the case of the Coalition v the ABC, 'feelpinions' have become evidence | World news | theguardian.com). If someone presents facts that contradict his comfort zone, he will dismiss them as 'theory' and anything he does is 'good'. This goes a long way to understanding how he can glibly dismiss leading global economists, the entire climate change scientific community or even his own sister's sexuality. I suppose people with the same comfort zone will applaud him for trusting his gut over science, economics, human rights and diplomacy.
Robo-Mannequin Solves Online Shopping's Thorniest Problem | Wired Design | Wired.com: Retailers ... ship clothing samples to Fits.me’s studio in Tartu, Estonia, where staff put each item on a mannequin that can alter its shape—thousands of combinations of hip width, chest diameter, sleeve length, and waist size. Then they photograph it. In the end, each item is associated with a giant database of images—and yes, one likely resembles you. So when you’re shopping at Adidas.com, you plug in your measurements and see the item you want on your body shape.
It's time for UN sanctions on Australia. Our government deserves nothing less | Antony Loewenstein | Comment is free | theguardian.com: After 20 years of steadily increasing cruelty towards refugees, it’s time to admit that we’ve reached a stalemate. Simply arguing for a more humane approach has failed. Reason, international law and common sense are no match against inflammatory media reporting, false fears about asylum seekers living in the community, and politicians proudly punishing the most vulnerable in the name of “deterrence.”
Alcohol-related violence: numbers don't always tally with media attention | News | theguardian.com: [R]eading the recent coverage, you would be forgiven for thinking that alcohol-related assaults are becoming more common. Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research statistics show the rate of alcohol-related assaults in New South Wales has been declining since 2008 and is the lowest since 2002, with 184.8 assaults per 100,000 people per year. It is however, still higher than the lowest point in 2000 of 136.6 assaults per 100,000.
Model View Culture: We end up in a scenario where the individual’s identity, community, popularity and influence - their self and attendant social capital - becomes part of an economic transaction with the company, and subject to its related benefits (for dominant groups) and threats (towards marginalized groups). By becoming a marketing, support and community platform for the company, the employee's speech in public arenas becomes intimately, explicitly or implicitly related to their economic and employment status.
Happy 40th birthday to Dungeons and Dragons | Mary Hamilton | Comment is free | theguardian.com: Over time gaming becomes more than a bonding experience: it’s something that can be tailored, like a film night or a book club, to the shared desires of your group. You can explore darkness, horror and fear; you can explore the giddy heights of utter ridiculousness; you can do both, with the same people, at the same time. These days, it's a versatile hobby.
Reckless travellers could be charged for consular assistance: Bishop: In News Ltd papers on Saturday Ms Bishop was reported to have outlined a review of fees for cost recovery of consular activities for Australians in trouble overseas, and the circumstances in which those fees could be levied. She reportedly said the review would consider whether the fee should into take account the difficulties travellers faced, including whether they had taken all reasonable precautions or had acted recklessly. They spin it quite well, but there should never ever be a question over whether you can go to your own embassy if you're in trouble. You can tell a lot by how a nation treats its most vulnerable; and what the Coalition are doing here is saying if your ideology doesn't match theirs, they might charge you very large amounts of money. These things are slippery slopes - keep in mind being gay is against their ideology; and they're not big on people who aren't rich either.
Mandy Lamont lightboxes - not shown on the site, but you can also get details of technical/engineering drawings (if you catch her at the markets). They make awesome night lights.
Fired? Speak No Evil - NYTimes.com[A] termination agreement pinged into my inbox. Much of it set forth standard-issue language resolving such matters as date of termination, the vesting of options, the release of all claims against the company, and the return of company property. ... What brings me up short is clause No. 12: No Disparagement. “You agree,” it reads, “that you will never make any negative or disparaging statements (orally or in writing) about the Company or its stockholders, directors, officers, employees, products, services or business practices, except as required by law.” If I don’t agree to this nondisparagement clause, I will not receive my severance — in this case, the equivalent of two weeks of pay. Two weeks? Must be hard times out in San Francisco, or otherwise why the dirt parachute — and by the way, is that the sort of remark I won’t be allowed to make if I sign clause No. 12?
