Happy birthday to benicekYour job always has its risks and life-and-death situations, but in this pandemic age we live in, the risks and the stakes are so much higher. So wishing you good health seems kind of inadequate, but I wish it nonetheless. And all the best to your family. May there be more light in the darkness ( Read more... )

Filed under "this has been in drafts for a while, but I'm only now getting around to posting it.

Brianna Price, knwon professionally as B.Traits is a Canadian DJ and record producer who currently lives in London. I found out about her from the eponymous radio show she used to do on BBC Radio 1. The show aired on Fridays late at night London time, ( Read more... )

Every Friday night, Canadian DJ and musician B.Traits plays some of the more experimental, off-the-wall techno/electronic music out there on BBC's flagship Radio 1 station. While in London, her show runs between 1:00 AM - 4:00 AM - which is 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM US Central Time. If I'm home at the time, I usually launch Winamp and put on Radio 1 as I ( Read more... )

It's time for my semi-regular look at some interesting and generally noteworthy podcasts I listened to in recent... Well, it would have been a week, but work stuff kept delaying this post, and Livejournal erased one of the drafts, forcing me to rewrite quite a bit from scratch, so it's really more of a month.

Over at made_of_fail_pc's Ango-Filles, mysticowl, ceilidh_ann and ( Read more... )

Since 1983, British correspondent Jon Snow has been working for United Kingdom's Independent Television News. He had a long, if sometimes controversial career that earned him plenty of accolades

But of course, these days, most people associate the name "Jon Snow" with another person entirely. And I suppose it's only a matter of time before ( Read more... )

I found out about Lady Susan, Jane Austen's epistolary novella, the same way I find out about a lot of things I review on this LJ - via smartbitches. Turns out that it was actually the first novel-length work Austen has ever written - and it's unlike anything we tend to expect to her. The protagonist (the eponymous Lady Susan Vernon) is a cheerfully immoral ( Read more... )

Earlier today (US Central Time) The Telegraph newspaper reported that David Cameron has officially launched an inquiry into curbing the House of Lords' ability to block certain types of legislationFor those who don't know how UK Parliament works, the legislature is made up of two chambers - the House of Commons and the House of Lords. While both ( Read more... )

If you watched TV in United States recently, chances are you've seen this phone charger ad

Click to view

And I'm not sure I'm the only person who thought - this song is pretty catchy. I wonder what it's calledIt took a bit of digging around in the comments, but I was able to find the full version ( Read more... )

From warren-ellis's latest newsletter:

This week I am reading THE WAKE by Paul Kingsnorth. It is written in a constructed language that combines Old English and modern English. It is incredibly difficult, to begin with, but you fall into its rhythms and lexical conceits within a few pages. Which, in and of itself, fucking fascinating. You may be sent to ( Read more... )

While looking through my livejournal stats, I stumbled across a post by alliruk at about what was, to me, a fairly obscure chapter in Russian history. I've translated the Russian parts of the post for the benefit of my non-Russian speaking readers.

As you read it, keep in mind that United Kingdom supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War - and ( Read more... )