[blogs] Early SMS Blogging … Last week I was trying to find a UK Blog that was sending SMS messages to blog posts in 2001. I’ve managed to dig it out of the Wayback Machine, screenshot below. The SMS messages feel like tweets. it’s an early attempt at Twitter in 2001! ’12:41 via SMS: You know the more I think about this SMS blogging lark, the more useful it’s becoming. Blog from a sports game, holiday, your car…’

[tv] Larry David Age Quiz … Can you guess which are the older pictures of Larry David? ‘When the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm aired in 2000, Larry David was 54 years old. For comparison, that is how old Paul Rudd is right now. But the benefit of looking older when you’re young is that it’s hard for others to tell the difference when you age.’

[manson] Netflix’s Chaos: The Manson Murders takes on a wild theory. Even Errol Morris isn’t sure he believes it. … Interview with Errol Morris about his new documentary on Charles Manson and the Tate/LaBianca murders. ‘How do you explain the fact that Manson’s parole officer just let him go again and again and again? He was just free to do whatever he chose to do. Can I explain it? I can’t. It could be meaningful or not. Is it suggestive of something peculiar? It is. But does it tell us that somehow they were all in league with the government? It doesn’t. I think it’s one of the most fascinating stories about investigation and the desire to believe and how hard it is really to investigate anything.’

[arts] All ifs ands or buts connected by green lines … By Sol Levitt, 1973. [Via Matt Fraction’s Tumblr Archive]

[comics] An Inside Look at the 13 Pre-Flashpoint Eras of Hellblazer … A great, detailed guide to the many different runs on Hellblazer. ‘Garth Ennis – Illustrated by Will Simpson and Steve Dillon, Garth Ennis’ tenure took Moore’s smug bastard, melded him with Delano’s substance-abusing mystic, and added a love for pubs.’

[blogs] 25 Random Thoughts about 25 years of LinkMachineGo:

1. Does anybody remember E/N “Everything and Nothing” sites? And before E/N there were the early internet diarists and people like Justin Hall and Maggy Donea. Blogging before blogs.
2. I started LinkMachineGo because I looked at Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom Weblog and thought I could do something similar and focus on comics. I wasn’t as good as Jorn but lasted longer. (Jorn’s still active on Twitter.)
3. I have a very faint memory of the Saturday afternoon in 2000 I sat down and tried to pull together a Blogger template. I did not realise at the time what a life changing moment it was for me.
4. I was obsessed with Big Brother in the early 2000s!
5. There are some earlier LMG posts that I find in real poor taste. What was I thinking? I can’t bring myself to remove them.
6. I do miss classic long-form blog posts. There really was something slightly magical in that format / community of bloggers / moment in time.
7. There was a really exciting moment early on with blogging where it looked liked it would take over the internet. The Cambrian Explosion of Blogs. Then social media came along and all the exciting variety died off.
8. In the early years of blogging I always felt terribly old when I met other 20-something bloggers. I was thirty! lol.
9. I will never forget this Metafilter comment about 911 posted as it was happening. I remember looking at it not grasping the enormity of it.
10. The magic of the early years of blogging mostly ended when the warblogs came along during the Iraq War. Warbloging seems like patient zero for a lot of what went bad in social media later.
11. I often wonder how responsible blogs are for social media and everything that came out of it. So many of the different components of social media were trialed on blogs first and it seems unarguable that Mark Zuckerberg came out of the world of blogs.
12. I try not to think about all the time I’ve spent on blogging or how much I’ve spent on hosting LMG over the years.
13. Even though I have never blogged professionally I do wonder how much impact blogging has had on my working life. It’s hard to quantify but I do think it’s been a big benefit.
14. LinkMachineGo spawned Moment of Moore and The Evening Standard Headline Crisis. I got a tweet out of Alan Moore! :)
15. Three links that have stayed with me: Falling Man / The Sinking of the Estonia / Since 1979, Brian Murtagh has fought to keep convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald in prison
16. Essential late-stage blogging tools: Firefox. Newsblur RSS Reader, a bunch of bookmarklets (remember those?), some iOS Shortcuts, Notepad++, CLCL, Irfanview, Pinboard.in, WordPress.
17. I find it really hard to blog on a phone. Fat fingers and the eyesight is not what it was! :(
18. Favorite quote: “On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald’s Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon’s big contributors in the ’72 presidential campaign: PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT. I read it several times before I grasped the full meaning.”
19. When I die I’m pretty sure whoever eulogizes me is going to mention blogging. I’m okay with that.
20. I’ve published 9000+ posts which is nearly one-a-day over 25 years. Why do I sink so much time and effort into it? I definitely find the process of link blogging soothing. Maybe the simple answer is that I just wanted to record and categorise some of my web browsing.
21. I sometimes wonder what the blog in gestalt reveals about me. I’m not sure I want to find out.
22. I apologise if I’ve stolen a link, or posted something annoying or pissed you off over the years. I hope you can forgive me.
23. I’m pretty sure nobody is reading this anymore really. I’m doing it just for myself.
24. When I say blogging changed my life, I mean it. It really changed my life.
25. Ten thousand posts seems pretty achievable. Wish me luck! :)

[movies] Gene Hackman: 20 Best Movies … The French Connection: ‘William Friedkin had planned on pushing Doyle to the outer limits of acceptability; the filmmaker later said that despite the fact Hackman had gone on ride-alongs with Eddie Egan, a.k.a. the real-life Popeye, his lead was so put off by the ugly places he had to go to that Hackman allegedly quit on the second day of production. He was eventually coaxed back, and struggled to find a way in to playing Egan until one day, he noticed the cop “dipping a cruller into a cup of coffee and then pitching it over his head. There was something in his attitude that made everything very clear: This guy doesn’t give a shit about anything except his work.” Bingo! The role won Hackman his first Academy Award. Everyone remembers the famous chase scene — the actor later joked that maybe the car should have won the Oscar — but Hackman is the engine that drives the whole movie.’

[pets] Are you the owner of a feckless Unemployed Pet? by Darren Cullen.

[gaiman] The Cuddled Little Vice (Sandman) … Elizabeth Sandifer does a deep dive into Neil Gaiman, his work, and the allegations of sexual assault and abuse. ‘In one of his few public comments about the influence of Scientology, Gaiman noted that he “grew up in a world in which being a science-fiction writer was a good thing. As far as my parents were concerned, that was an incredibly esteemed profession.” And now, as he swept the genre awards for that field, picking up nominations for practically every Best Novel award there was and winning the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Bram Stoker awards, the engrammatic patterns implicit in the Gaiman family’s vision of being a famous science fiction writer took hold.’

[comics] Interviewing Alan Moore … A huge collection of scans of Alan Moore interviews over the years with plenty I’ve not seen before. From an early interview in 1981: ‘My greatest personal hope is that someone will revive Marvelman and I’ll get to write it. KIMOTA!!’

[life] Live-updating Version of the ‘What a week, huh?’ Meme [Day | Week | Month | Year] …

[food] This is my final OFM column. Here’s what I’ve learned about buffets, ‘clean eating’ and what not to serve food on … Some advice on food and dining out from Jay Rayner in his final Happy Eater column. ‘Eating alone in a restaurant is dinner with someone you love and a delicious opportunity for people watching. Great food can be found in the scuzziest of places. Gravy stains down your shirt are not a source of embarrassment; they are a badge of honour. Expensive restaurants are wasted on the people who can afford them. And food should always, always, be served on plates. Not on slates. Not on garden trowels. Not on planks. On plates.’

[tetris] Apotris … This is the best modern version of Tetris I’ve found – available on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch and Gameboy Advance. You can play on your phone if you use an emulator like Delta with the GBA version.

[politics] Nigel Farage, Jordan Peterson & co worship each other in alt-right heaven … John Cace watches a Culture War Conference so we don’t have to. ‘Then Jordan [Peterson] moved on to his favourite subject. What the world needed was more heterosexual couples to get married. Homosexuality was a deviation. There was too much abortion and divorce in the world. You’d be hard pushed to hear a more unpleasant rant all year. It was too much even for Nige, who confessed he had been divorced twice. He looked nervously at Jordan before ending by saying there would be more children under Reform. Trying to win over the audience. Still, at least no one asked him about his admiration of Putin. I’ve never seen Nige more pleased to leave the stage.’

[history] Distressed 99 Foot Concrete Portrait of Ferdinand Marcos … More details here: The exploded bust of Ferdinand Marcos… ‘The bust was completed in the early 1980s when Mr Marcos was still in power, but fell into disrepair after he was overthrown in a popular revolt in 1986. He died in exile three years later. This is a real modern-era Ozymandias, the broken remnants of a statue to a powerful man who grabbed command by the throat and rode it until he was overthrown.’

[lists] 25 Dull Lists from Diamond Geezer … ‘Hills in the City of London: Addle, Bennet’s, Cock, College, Dowgate, Fish Street, Garlick, Huggin, Lambeth, Laurence Pountney, Ludgate, Old Fish Street, Peter’s, Primrose, Snow, St Andrew’s, St Dunstans, Tower, White Lion’

[podcast] The Missing Cryptoqueen… Finally got round to listening to this fascinating podcast on the story of Ruja Ignatova and OneCoin from Jamie Bartlett. Recommended.

[herzog] Happy Werner Herzog Valentines to those that celebrate … ‘Valentine, in your eyes I see the light, the heat; also chaos, hostility, and murder.’

[movies] Bad Movies: The 100 Worst Movies of All Time … Following up from yesterday, here’s Rotten Tomatoes list of the worst movies. Jack and Jill (2011): ‘Although it features an inexplicably committed performance from Al Pacino, Jack and Jill is impossible to recommend on any level whatsoever.’

[film] Splat’s entertainment: I watched Rotten Tomatoes’ 40 lowest-rated films to find out which was worst … Rebecca Liu watched 40 of the worst movies so we don’t have to. ‘While good art can be transcendent and awe-inducing, bad art at its best reminds us of our humility and vulnerability and the inevitability of failure. We all feel the desire to create; we all see grand ambitions fall apart. Plenty of the films in this list were corporate cash-grabs and paint-by-numbers productions that could have been generated by AI. Beyond them, it’s those moments of humanity – funny, absurd, too close to home – that will stay with me. That bizarre piece of dialogue; the performance that tries too hard; Nicolas Cage signing up to a questionable script because it would make his brother happy.’

[comics] Unused cover for The Collected Bojeffries Saga … Really lovely painted cover by Garry Leach.

[life] What parking apps tell us about the UK… A deep dive into why digitisation is leading to the eshittification of society. ‘Our 5G is patchy; our internet speeds middling; our websites crash; the train plug sockets are out of action, etc. There are so many hidden costs to digitisation, and most are passed on to the consumer. I call this ‘techno-admin’. Large firms use automation to cut staff and reduce administrative overheads, especially when it comes to customer service. But what they have actually done is outsource the admin work to the customer. We are the ones now form-filling, changing passwords, self-serving, and (this is the worst bit) fixing errors. I sometimes wonder if the UK’s productivity problem – which has flatlined since 2010 – is partly caused by a surge in techno-admin.’

[art] What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? … I reread this article from 2017 recently about the complexity of enjoying the work of men like Woody Allen. ‘Just as Manhattan never authentically or fully examines the complexities of an old dude nailing a high schooler, Allen himself—an extremely well-spoken guy—becomes weirdly inarticulate when discussing Soon-Yi. In a 1992 interview with Walter Isaacson of Time, Allen delivered the line that became famous for its fatuous dismissal of his moral shortcomings: “The heart wants what it wants.” It was one of those phrases that never leaves your head once you’ve heard it: we all immediately memorized it whether we wanted to our not. Its monstrous disregard for anything but the self. Its proud irrationality.’

[lifehacks] The Most Powerful Life Hacks I’ve Found … I always seem to find something useful in these posts with lists of life hacks. Maybe you will too. ‘Be reliable. You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work. Reliability is one of the most underrated traits. In the short run, it is much harder to be exceptional than it is to be reliable, and in the long run, being consistently reliable makes you exceptional.’

[comics] Alan Moore And Chris Claremont Speak Out On Writing (from Speakeasy 054) … A real moment of comic history captured here. Moore has just written Watchmen #1 and the Claremont era of the X-Men is in full swing. Moore: ‘I agree that the establishment of invisible character detail, the stuff that is not on the surface, the stuff that is just subliminal – context – is an important thing. With Watchmen we tried to really go in for that. It’s an extension of the technique that I used in Halo Jones, probably a lot different to the clear establishing that Chris was talking about, in that it’s an extension of the idea of teaching parallel languages by dumping people in a room full of foreigners. Okay, the first time it’s going to be hell and the first time it’s going to be incomprehensible, but eventually your understanding of that world will be much more thorough. It’s a long shot, but I think it’s going to work because we have got a lot of space: we’re working on nine panels of page as opposed to the normal six. That gives you half the book again and you’ve got twenty eight pages so, in effect you’re doing a forty two page book or something, which gives you a lot of information. It’s not a very big story either. It’s a story that I could probably have told in three issues, but were telling it in twelve. It’s not going to be padded, it’s just that having twelve we’ve got room to explore all the characters.’

[comics] Green Lantern Theory … ‘Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan, who coined the term, explained that the Green Lantern theory is “the belief that the president can achieve any political or policy objective if only he tries hard enough or uses the right tactics.” The assumption is that the president is all-powerful, and when he can’t get something done, it’s because he’s not trying hard enough.’

[batman] The Batbible … A comprehensive guide to Batman’s character, history, and universe, originally written by Dennis O’Neil in 1989 for creators working on DC Batman projects. ‘Batman is a detective, but not of the genteel ilk– no Hercules Poirot or Nero Wolf, but rather a Marlowe or Continental Op times ten. We should achieve a balance between ratiocination and action, neglecting neither, but perhaps emphasizing the latter. Stories should above all, move. Batman should never do something sitting that he can do running or leaping or jumping off a rooftop. Exposition and explanation should always be integrated with action. Talking heads are to be eschewed. Villains should be larger than life, and preferably grotesque. The Joker and Two-Face are perfect examples of Batman bad guys; they wear their villainy on their faces and they represent archetypical traits (Joker: anarchy and chaos: Two Face: the dichotomy between good and evil that exists in most human beings.) And they are both natural antagonists to a hero like the Batman. Keep them in mind when creating new baddies and you won’t go far wrong.’

[comics] Dave Gibbon’s Early Gigs – Underground Comics 1970-1973 … Go buy a great collection of obscure, early comics from Dave Gibbons.

[life] Wikenigma … An Encyclopedia of the known unknowns. Paracetemol: ‘One of the most widely prescribed drugs in history works by mechanisms which have not yet been agreed upon by the medical establishment. It‘s currently thought that paracetamol acts via more than one neurological pathway…’

[tv] An oral history of Twin Peaks … Lots of interesting details from the cast and co-creator. Mark Frost: ‘When we were shooting in Seattle, we asked our local casting agent to show us some young women who might be right for Laura Palmer. We saw hundreds of photos, then we met with Sheryl Lee and loved her – so much so that we said: “Well, we can’t just have her be a picture on a television set. We have to find a way to bring her back to life.” Sheryl was absolutely perfect and a dream to work with. There’s a lot of serendipity when you’re doing something like this, and on almost every occasion, the right person walked through the door.’