An unintentionally powerful piece of design from the CIA

From Social Design Notes

The ACLU has posted a handful of documents they’ve pried from the CIA about the use of waterboarding on prisoners in CIA custody.

After the Director of the CIA publicly admitted that the CIA has, in fact, used waterboarding, the agency could hardly argue that this was a state secret.

Apologies in advance for the incomprehensible nature of this post.

OK, I’ve linked my Wii account to my Nintendo club account so in a sane world I’d be able to simply buy Wii credits with those points which I could then use to buy virtual console/Wii-ware titles. In this sane world there would be no problem for Nintendo in providing me with these credits and I could just buy them whenever I had enough points (you earn points by buying certain Nintendo games, usually the first party ones and a few key franchises, advance wars etc.). Instead I have to order credits in groups of 500, 1000 or 1500 (conveniently the precise value of nothing in the Wii shop so you always have unusable change) and they get delivered to your door in the form of a card with a handy string of numbers and letters that you have to laboriously type in using the Wii’s on screen keyboard. Oh yeah and they’re never in stock. Yes that’s right a purely imaginary currency which never need exist in the physical world but for stupid Nintendo reasons does, is always out of stock. So I’m unable to spend my points.

And now to add to my woes Nintendo inform me that my points are going to start expiring at the end of the month. Do you have any idea how long it’s taken me to save up over 10,000 of those fuckers? Bloody ages that’s how long! Each game you buy gives you about 250 so those of you who can do mental arithmetic can probably work out how much of my cash I’ve thrown at Nintendo over the years (not including console purchases, 2 GBA SPs, a Gamecube, Wii, 2 DS’s some plastic bongo drums etc.). I prefer not to do that calculation. Is it too much to ask for a little something back? I really don’t want to be spending my hard earned points on princess peach mobile phone wallpaper.

:(

We’ve just watched episode 10 of the fourth series of The Wire. The accepted wisdom seems to be that The Wire, at least up the end of 4, is on an entirely upward trajectory but I’ve got to say that so far, after the magnificence of 3 it’s a bit well not a let down but sort of business as usual. Obviously the previous series have all built strongly in the later episodes so I may be jumping the gun here.

What do you think?

surely this headline should be :
Computer “generated” “abuse” “banned”
?

I haven’t watched 30 Rock because it’s name and premise are too similar to Studio 60 (which I also haven’t watched) and I have a strange sense of loyalty to Aaron Sorkin even though by leaving The West Wing half way through he showed he feels no such loyalty to me. Anyway, on the strength of this youtube clip I’m prepared to download a couple of episodes and give it a chance; what with uncanny valley being one of my favourite explanations for things, and people who look like J Mascis being one of my favourite types of people. Maybe it’s the new Larry Sanders, someone must have said that already though so I’ll need to come up with a fresh angle for pub conversations.

When I’m in my office alone, particularly if I’m in over night for an election or whatever, which I’m not at the moment, I’m just in early, it feels like a long distance aeroplane flight.

Just saying.

via Neil
A very American internet list of books; the top 106 books tagged “unread” in library thing

Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your To Be Read list

To take advantage of my stylesheet and highlight things all the italics and underlines are also bold but that doens’t mean I’ve read them, just that I think it looks better to do it that way. Also opinions:
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Chiptunes? Not cool. Asshole douchebaggery? Totally hipster! Put it on Pitchfork.

From here RE: “Crystal Castles”.

PS. Yes, f*cking quotation.

I don’t often talk about specific concrete worky things here (or anywhere else for that matter) but I just wanted to mention what I thought was an excellent idea I had this morning that didn’t make it, presumably because it would appeal only to info graphics geeks and the tone is maybe a bit wrong.

Background: You know how there’s some football thing happening in Moscow next week? Yeah don’t worry I didn’t either but apparently there is. It’s difficult to get visas to go to Moscow at the best of times, if you’re a football fan trying to get one at short notice it’s really difficult and, you know, two British teams abroad, cheap vodka etc. there’s bound to be a pretty high attrition rate on the way there and then some are going to be stuck in customs/ prison and be unable to leave once they get there.

The idea: So what I wanted to do was to recreate Josef Minard’s Carte Figurative (considered by some to be the best statistical graphic EVAR) but the with lines representing British football fans instead of Napoleonic Soldiers. We’d use the same visual style to show how many set off, how many get left behind at various border crossings and how many get stuck once they arrive in Moscow. Clearly a brilliant idea.