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Thursday, June 16, 2022

Knives out: After 27 years, Internet Explorer is dead

“Blogging is not just to explain, to tell anything, but it is also a great medium for the exchange of ideas.”


After 27 years, Internet Explorer is dead

Internet Explorer is finally headed out to pasture, joining BlackBerry phones, dial-up modems and Palm Pilots in the dustbin of tech history.


Material and immaterial Times Literary Supplement. The deck: Why we should care about cloth and how it’s made


ESCAPE FROM AUSCHWITZ

Walter Rosenberg knew that escaping from the Auschwitz Concentration Camp was a crazy idea and probably impossible, but when he turned 18, he knew he should be the one to attempt it. Others had tried and failed. Even attempting to warn someone before their deaths resulted in one’s own death for breaking the deception the Nazi’s employed to efficiently usher their prisoners into the gas chambers.

“The factory of murder that the Nazis had constructed in this accursed place depended on one cardinal principle: that the people who came to Auschwitz did not know where they were going, or for what purpose. . . . The Nazis had devised a method that would operate like a well-run slaughterhouse rather than a shooting party.”

On April 7, 1944, he and Fred Wetzler acted on all of their preparations. The UK Guardian has their story.

“Walter understood that the Nazis wanted him and every other prisoner to conclude that escape was futile, that any attempt was doomed. But Walter drew a very different lesson. The danger came not from trying to escape, but from trying and failing


Barilaro burns Google in Friendly Jordies case “victory”. What’s the Scam?


No 10 unable to explain why - in apparently unprecedented move - Geidt was asked to advise on legality of tariff policy

And here are some more lines from what was said at the Downing Street lobby briefing about the resignation of Lord Geidt.

  • The spokesperson was unable to explain why Geidt was being asked to advise the PM on a matter relating to tariff policy. And he failed to give any precedent for Geidt, or his predecessors, giving advice on whether government policy broke internatonal law. One of the odd features of this story is that Geidt was being asked to advise not on the conduct of an individual minister, but on a decision taken by the government as a whole. Boris Johnson said it was a proposal to breach WTO trade rules. (See 12.01pm.) But it is normally for the government law officers to advise on these matters, not the independent adviser on ministers’ interests. Sir Alex Allan was the ethics adviser when the government published its initial internal market bill in 2020, which it admitted would break international law. But there is no evidence Allan was asked if this would be in breach of the ministerial code. And there is no evidence that Geidt was asked about the Northern Ireland protocol bill, which is widely seen as being an even more egregious breach of international law (even though the government claims it is compliant with international treaties). Asked if Geidt had in the past been asked to advise on policies that could be against international law, the spokesperson was unable to answer that. But he also said advice to the PM was confidential.

Knives out

Sacred Modernity, a forthcoming look at the best of European church architecture (via Wallpaper*) / see also this collection of abandoned churches / can you count Ten Seconds (via Spark Edition) / 45 of the best shoegaze songs / Top 100 90’s Hip Hop Samples 1990-1999 / the 200 Most Important Artists of Pitchfork’s First 25 Years / Excerpt from “Neighbors”, a 1952 short film by Norman McLaren (via Synth History) / Sequential Founder & ‘Father Of MIDI’ Dave Smith Has Died / Composers & Computers, a new podcast. Both links via Synthtopia / elaborate handmade watches by Masahiro Kikuno / the critical axes are being sharpened, once again, for Thomas Heatherwick, whose ‘Tree of Trees‘ is already primed for a fall.



Anne Lister has recently crept out of the shadows of what was her own gothic novel, penned almost two centuries ago. Like all things of the neo-Gothic late 18thcentury, hers was also a world of shadows, veils, intrigues and most of all, it concealed her obsessional love for other women.

It took a Hundred Years and Two Gays to Decode Her Diaries


Audrey Hepburn, living in Nazi occupied Netherlands, suffering malnutrition, raised funds for the resistance by dancing in underground concerts


Julian Assange spying case: Judge suggests CIA may have received illicitly recorded conversations El Pais


Fast Company: “Emotional intelligence is a mission-critical skill to hone for strong interpersonal communication, collaboration, and connection in the workplace. It might just build some momentum that advances your career, too. Here’s all you need to know about emotional intelligence—what it is, why it matters, and how to cultivate it on the job…”