Bookmarks for the 6th of June, 2014

  • Kumail Nanjiani’s The X-Files Files

    Kumail Nanjiani and a guest breakdown every single episode of The X-Files from start to finish. The truth is out there!

    Listen to this, it’s brill.

  • Creating the perfect GPG keypair

    A guide to using subkeys to help mitigate the damage to your identity should your key be lost or stolen.

  • MP3, DVD and CD Copying is Now Legal in The UK (For Some)

    Thank goodness for that.

  • Village Lock-ups

    Village lock-ups are historic buildings that were used for the temporary detention of people in rural parts of England and Wales. They were often used for the confinement of drunks who were usually released the next day or to hold people being brought before the local magistrate.

    As seen on the Everton crest.

    For some reason I love small, old tower-like structures–see also dovecotes, doocots and Lanterns of the Dead.

  • Project Xanadu®

    Project Xanadu is a much-misunderstood initiative to create a different kind of computer world, based on a different kind of electronic document–PARALLEL PAGES, VISIBLY CONNECTED!

    54 years in the making.

  • Ukip founder Alan Sked: ‘The party has become a Frankenstein’s monster’

    In 1993, along with backing British withdrawal from the EU, prospective [UKIP] members had to be sympathetic to the following: “It is a non-sectarian, non-racist party with no prejudices against foreigners or lawful minorities of any kind. It does not recognise the legitimacy of the European parliament and will send representatives only to the British parliament in Westminster.”

  • Ukip MEP Nathan Gill employed ‘dozens’ of immigrants and ‘kept them in bunkhouses’

    A newly-elected Ukip MEP has admitted his businesses employed “dozens” of workers from eastern Europe and the Philippines who were kept in “bunkhouses” – but insists this is not inconsistent with his party’s anti-immigration policies.

  • System D

    System D (in French, Système D) is a shorthand term that refers to a manner of responding to challenges that requires one to have the ability to think fast, to adapt, and to improvise when getting a job done. The letter D refers back to either of the French nouns débrouillardise[1] or démerde (French slang). The verbs se débrouiller and se démerder mean to make do, to manage, especially in an adverse situation.

    In “Down and Out in Paris and London”, George Orwell calls out the term “débrouillard” as something the lowest-level kitchen workers, the plongeurs, wanted to be called, as people who would get the job done, no matter what.

  • Licence granted for hovercraft link between Wirral and North Wales

    Terribly exciting, until you find out the hovercraft’s destination. (Spoiler: it’s Rhyl.)

  • Can You Decipher These 11 Historical Political Cartoons?

    Don’t bother clicking through–it’s a ‘LOL the past amirite?!’ listicle–just feast your eyes on this: