“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
― Jon Stewart
Hope American minions had a delightful holiday! I went to an American service at St. Paul’s Cathedral headed by the US Ambassador and his family and then spent the rest of the day doing some Christmas shopping. An intensely Protestant sermon was preached which infuriated my Catholic seatmate, yet electrified the couple who walked down the cathedral steps next to me – so even the tradition of being surrounded by people disagreeing fiercely was upheld! A fortifying plum and almond tart at Liberty saw me through until I had leftover curry for dinner. Jeff meanwhile wrestled with an uncooperative rental bowtie for his tux before heading off to his office’s Christmas party in Bloomsbury. (A visual representation of our differences can be found here. Along with other general London goodness.) An unconventional but very nice holiday all around.
Alas ’tis not a holiday over here so I still have to be productive. Here are your links (actually pretty well connected to a theme this week) and enjoy the weekend!
Apparently my name is Grey Selkirk. Which sounds rather sleek and deadly to be honest. Now, which district would I belong to? Having not read the series I rely on you, gentle readers, to let me know (looking at you, Janssen).
Let’s continue with the geekery, shall we? Hello, sweetie. I got River Song!
All communication technology changes language, but the internet allows us to track it in ways we haven’t exactly used before. Meme language interests me.
tumblr find of the week – first drafts are utterly dreadful. My just finished one is unusually bad, I think. Pearl clutchers disregard the title.
In lady news – awesome.
We’re debating adding Monty’s Python’s Live (mostly) Show to our theatre schedule. Even if we don’t, I just have to say that the registration site is morbidly hilarious. (ETA: this thing sold out in 45 seconds. I’m impressed.)
Fair warning, this is a pen commercial. It’s also downright impressive.
I have nothing but respect for this woman and the legal lengths she went to. Admittedly I have mixed feelings on a lot of hacking culture (which I admit I don’t understand all the nuances of and probably could learn a lot more of), and I take privacy issues very seriously, but the fact that this site is no more should be cause for celebration.
Quentin Blake, illustrator of Roald Dahl fame graced Stylist (one of London’s many free and gorgeous mags) with drawings of some of his favorite authors.
Small Dog Syndrome 
Loved the nurse’s letter.
Have very mixed feelings about the hacked photos. Yes, they need to be shut down. But I question why people decide it’s a wise move to have photos of themselves naked or in compromising situations when this sort of behavior is possible. People who are hacked is one thing. Naively assuming no one will ever take this sort of revenge? Seriously?
I think the mentality these days is, “If it’s taken, there’s a good chance someone I don’t want to will see it,” but it’s taken nearly two decades for that seemingly obvious fact to be realized. At the PD I was honestly shocked at how little some students thought about privacy, until theirs was violated. We live in such a voyeuristic society where we derive a lot of our active and even passive entertainment from other people’s privacy violations that we tend to expect it…until it happens to us. I think in the next few years, because of cases like this, we’re culturally going to have to fundamentally shift the way we think about privacy, and how we choose to document ourselves and our lives.
Call me a prude and I’m fine with it. I have never (and will never) have photos or videos of me without my clothes on accessible to anyone. I completely fail to get why any woman of any age thinks this is a wise decision.
The whole issue of “revenge porn”, as a separate problem, is a grotesque new sort of misogyny.
The legal/judicial system needs to get up to speed STAT to protect those who have been so violated.
I’m a TOTAL prude about this stuff, no worries! I agree totally. I’d never allow it and I don’t understand why so many people do, but I suspect it’s from a false idea of how much privacy we really have these days. I don’t think some people really grasp that the truth is we have very little. They think (utterly wrongly) that things like photos won’t be shared or that it won’t be traced to them somehow. It’s completely delusional. The revenge porn is already horrifying enough, but the idea that some people go mining for unshared data is truly scary. Like I said, if it exists, shared or not, it WILL get out.
Back to film and negatives. They, at least, can be shredded or burned.
I’m Rory. Just thought you should know. I think it’s pretty accurate. And I totally see you as River.