Thom's Link Emporium - 0017 16 May 2022

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Links

  1. It's certainly no bad thing this child porn ring was brought down, but it shows how despite claims to the contrary, bitcoin transactions are far from secret and private. But the crypto community have a catchphrase, so presumably that'll help? The catchphrase ("we're all going to make it") itself has a pretty dark history.

  2. A British true crime writer with a colourful CV as a profiler turns out to be a charlatan

  3. Neil Armstrong responds to a conspiracy theorist who thinks he didn't go to the moon

  4. DJI claims that drone-tracking signals were encrypted. They weren't, but DJI kept up with the lie until proven otherwise

  5. Less than a month after I met my soulmate, I ended my 14-year marriage. The title of her book is a pretty good punchline to this piece (borrowed from Martin Belam's newsletter, which comes highly recommended)

  6. An update from Lawrence Freedman on the current state of the war in Ukraine with particular focus on the 9 May parade

  7. Douglas Adams gives feedback on a comic adaptation of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "If you feel that referring to ‘Marks & Spencer’ might seriously freak out Americans because they haven’t heard of it… we could either put warning stickers on the label (‘The text of this book contains references to places and institutions outside the continental United States and may cause offence to people who haven’t heard of them’) or you could, I suppose, put ‘Harrods’, which most people will have heard of. Or we could even take the appalling risk of just recklessly mentioning things that people won’t have heard of and see if they survive the experience. They probably will – when people are born they haven’t heard or anything or anywhere, but seem to get through the first years of their lives without ill-effects."

  8. One for the nightmare banks: Melted and damaged wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s

Listening

I’ve been enjoying Rosalía’s new album, Motomami. It remains a latino-pop album similar to her previous work, but it feels like she’s moved into a considerably more confident and experimental space and the end result is perhaps the most interesting pop album so far this year. (Spotify,  Music)

Reading

I’ve known about the stand up, Phil Wang, for some time (who can forget his Bruce Lee onesie-wearing appearance on Taskmaster?), but I was only made aware of his most recent book, Sidesplitter, on Adam Buxton’s podcast. The book is part-memoir, part reflections on being a mixed-race person growing up in Malaysia and then the UK. It’s funny, well-written, thoughtful and intelligent. Unlike, therefore, most comedian’s memoirs.

Watching

I watched A Hard Day’s Night for the first time as a teenager. Subsequently, I’ve probably seen it another four or five times. I like it, although I don’t think it’s quite the classic that some seem to think it is. It has its moments but it’s very dated, not all that funny, and The Beatles are not the greatest actors.

I’d never seen Help before. It has a reputation of being terrible, and it’s certainly very dated, both in style and culture. However, I don’t think it’s a great deal worse than its predecessor, and it’s pretty watchable. It too is very dated and not all that funny, and The Beatles haven’t got noticeably better at acting since their last outing.

All that said, it’s very watchable, it’s great to see The Beatles in colour, and although there should be a lot more of them, all the musical numbers are great. It’s worth checking out, as a curio if nothing else. There isn’t an option to see the film on a streaming service as far as I’m aware, so you’ll have to work out for yourself if it’s worth splashing out for.

Quote

Men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women.

Mary Wollstonecraft