Spalpeen

Beaverbrook […] is remembered for his famous prediction: “There will be no war in Europe.” His Express splashed that on 1 September 1939, the day Hitler invaded Poland, and the war began.

Then he brought up his dad, who co-founded “Two Nice Guys,” a pizza restaurant also in St. Louis. When Dorsey’s dad and his co-founder began to hire people, Dorsey said, they promised each other they wouldn’t date any of the wait staff. “First person to get hired is my mom,” Dorsey went on, “And so my dad had to leave the business and I was born.

If you’ve ever wished you were born in the 19th century, when there were so many obvious inventions and ideas to hook for yourself, then I seriously recommend you become a coder, because future nerds will look back on this time with the exact same envy. But that leap forward will be tediously retarded if we don’t make the government allow us to use the pavements.

If Cameron wants to take credit for the removal of Gaddafi then he cannot avoid responsibility for the aftermath. Yet that responsibility strips a new regime of homegrown legitimacy and strength. This is the classic paradox of liberal interventionism.

We are running through the United States with dynamite and rock saws so an algorithm can close the deal three microseconds faster, all for a communications system that no humans will ever see,” said Mr Slavin.

Laurie Penny: I’m not a fucking cartoon character, and I actually have some serious things to say

I wrote an automated thing that posted stuff like ‘WHO CARES???!!!’ or ‘ZZZ Lazy Journalism’ on every new article on the Guardian’s similarly afflicted Comment Is Free site. Rather than appreciating my satirical effort, the Graun banned my account. The people in charge of these things don’t understand the medium they’re trying to exploit.

Amazing comment.

New Statesman - Who needs S&M when you can write for the Telegraph?

There is another sensation you feel watching these pictures, and it is one with which we are becoming increasingly familiar, especially in 2011, the year the news refused to stop. It is impotence.

11.To amplify: I can’t find the quote but one of the historians of the French Revolution of 1789 wrote that it was not the product of poor people but of poor lawyers. You can have political/economic setups that disappoint the poor for generations - but if lawyers, teachers and doctors are sitting in their garrets freezing and starving you get revolution. Now, in their garrets, they have a laptop and broadband connection.

Iran has helpfully called for British police to “show restraint” in dealing with the riots, according to state TV.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast urged the British government to order the police to stop their violent confrontation with the people, IRNA reported in the early hours of Tuesday.
Mehmanparast asked the British government to start dialogue with the protesters and to listen to their demands in order to calm the situation down.
The Iranian official also asked independent human rights organizations to investigate the killing in order to protect the civil rights and civil liberties. Quick reminder of what Iranian restraint looks like

What price the Big Society as Tottenham, the most solid of communities, lies in ruins? The notion that small-state Britain can be run along the lines of Ambridge parish council by good-hearted, if under-funded, volunteers has never seemed more doubtful. Nor can Ed Miliband take much credit for his unvaried focus on the “squeezed middle”, rather than on a vote-losing underclass that politicians ignore at their peril, and at ours.

In my view, the best outcome would be this: Hari writes a full and frank account of what he did and why he did it; the Independent runs an analysis of how this was allowed to happen, as the New York Times did in the Jayson Blair case; Simon Kelner gives a personal account of his role in the affair; and then Hari can go off and rebuild his life. If he insists on working in journalism, he’ll have to do what he never did in the first place and work his way up from the bottom; on the other hand, he could turn out to be a great novelist, or an amazing charity campaigner, or any number of other things. He’s a bright man and still young.

The refusal to publish further information means that spending by MoD civil servants cannot be scrutinised.

Over the past four years, the MoD spent £986,041,110 on department credit cards, far more than any other government body. The disclosure will add to concerns over the management of the ministry, which is grappling with a multi-billion pound black hole in its finances.

Ministry of Defence spends £1 billion on staff credit cards - Telegraph

£1 Billion on credit cards, and you’re not allowed to see on what.