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Margaret Thatcher has died following a stroke her spokesman Lord Bell has said. Details are still coming out but the Iron Lady of British politics was and is a divisive figure even today. She will probably be best remembered for her role in the coal miner's strikes and the Falklands War. Her life in pictures is already online. The obituaries have been written for some time.
comment posted at 7:44 AM on Apr-8-13
comment posted at 8:35 PM on Apr-8-13

Megabumtopia (explanatory Reddit thread) is a virtual libertarian paradise which houses over a million happy Sims without worrying about things like 'power' or 'sewage treatment' or 'drinkable water'. SimCity's recent launch problems have been discussed previously on Metafilter.
comment posted at 2:10 AM on Apr-8-13
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Postcards From Google Earth: "I collect Google Earth images. I discovered them by accident, these particularly strange snapshots, where the illusion of a seamless and accurate representation of the Earth’s surface seems to break down. I was Google Earth-ing, when I noticed that a striking number of buildings looked like they were upside down."
comment posted at 8:54 PM on Apr-6-13

On Monday, the British Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, made a rather rash claim on BBC Radio 4. Hijinks ensue. 'Duncan Smith came under pressure after he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday that he could live on £53 ($81/week) after he was asked about a market trader, David Bennett, who claimed that he had to live on that amount after his housing benefit was cut. "If I had to, I would," Duncan Smith replied." ' from The Guardian. Since then a petition has started challenging him to try it. Petition has gathered 440,133 signatures in 5 days. Original report. There is a secondary petition going: this one is guaranteed to be debated in Parliament if it gets 100,000 signatures.
comment posted at 10:21 PM on Apr-5-13

Prolific and well-respected film critic Roger Ebert has died at 70.
comment posted at 5:49 PM on Apr-4-13

ICIJ has 2.5 million files from over 120,000 offshore legal entities covering 30 years of emails and financial records from from 10 offshore tax havens..
comment posted at 8:29 PM on Apr-4-13

Google is forking WebKit. WebKit was a fork of KHTML and now Google is creating a new fork called Blink. Opera will contribute to it and use it too. Vendor specific prefixes will no longer be supported.
comment posted at 7:55 PM on Apr-3-13
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RT @bijli Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, the German-born screenwriter and novelist who, as the writing member of the Merchant Ivory filmmaking team, won two Academy Awards for adaptations of genteel, class-conscious E. M. Forster novels, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85. Her 1975 novel, “Heat and Dust,” about an Englishwoman exploring a family scandal in India, received the Man Booker Prize, Britain’s highest literary honor. She wrote the screenplay for the Merchant Ivory version in 1983 as well. New York Times obit
comment posted at 5:49 PM on Apr-3-13

Which of these two cities is bigger? The Census bureau has a quiz to see how well you know the relative sizes of the 64 largest metropolitan areas in the US, March Madness style.
comment posted at 11:06 PM on Apr-3-13

Is this a pandemic being born? [Google cache] The H7N9 (Bird) Flu Virus May Have Adapted To Mammals. The WHO is investigating. Four new human cases were identified late Tuesday.
comment posted at 3:12 AM on Apr-3-13
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The Criticwire Survey: Overrated Masterpieces. Badlands... La Dolce Vita... 8 1/2... The Godfather... Star Wars... Citizen Kane... Taxi Driver... ...
comment posted at 11:54 PM on Apr-2-13

As a companion to his fascinating Raffles and the British Invasion of Java, Tim Hannigan has a blog — Footnotes and Sidelights from the Story of the British Interregnum in Java, wherein he shares interesting stories that could not find space in the published book.
comment posted at 7:49 PM on Apr-1-13

The Cambridge University Library houses the world's largest collection of Charles Darwin's letters: more than 9,000 of the 15,000 letters he is known to have written and received in his lifetime. They've been posting them online since 2007 (previously on MeFi), in the Darwin Correspondence Project, where we can now read and search the full texts of more than 7,500 letters, and find information on 7,500 more -- all for free. This weekend, they added nearly all of the Darwin-Hooker letters: Over 1400 pieces of correspondence between Darwin and his closest friend, botanist Joseph Hooker.
comment posted at 9:27 PM on Mar-31-13

BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders asks "Should Britain let go of London?"
comment posted at 8:16 PM on Mar-26-13

"When I was a little guy I was infatuated with firetrucks. That's probably not unusual. Boys like trucks. But kids usually grow out of this kind of thing. I didn't. I'm 32 and a half years old and never stopped thinking firetrucks are awesome. So I bought one."
comment posted at 9:37 PM on Mar-24-13

Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been found dead
comment posted at 9:30 PM on Mar-23-13

The Nielsen Family Is Dead. Nielsen Now Tracks (Almost) Everything You Buy: Credit, Debit and Bank Data Now Combined With TV, Online Viewing. Nielsen Offers Focus on ‘Zero-TV’ Homes. Nielsen Agrees to Expand Definition of TV Viewing. The 23,000 U.S. homes Nielsen currently samples are going to see some changes this year.
comment posted at 12:53 AM on Mar-21-13

Developer evangelist Adria Richards snaps a photo of two men at the recent PyCon whom she overheard making quips about "big dongles". PyCon responds, following which one of the men is fired. Adria justifies the callout as a step towards securing the future of programming for women. Full discussion at Hacker News.
comment posted at 12:00 AM on Mar-21-13

Does BBC Worldwide's sale of Lonely Planet at an £80 million loss (after writing down its value by £67 million over 6 years), on top of Google's purchase of Frommer's last year, herald the end of travel guidebooks?
comment posted at 4:37 AM on Mar-21-13

I just attended a debate in New York a few weeks ago about whether or not we should outlaw genetic engineering in babies and the audience was pretty split. In China, 95 percent of an audience would say, “Obviously you should make babies genetically healthier, happier, and brighter!”
comment posted at 9:07 PM on Mar-18-13

On April 3, 1988, the Los Angeles Times Magazine pub­lished a 25-year look ahead to 2013.
comment posted at 3:11 AM on Mar-18-13

Tenacious Irish journalist demands an answer at a European Central Bank press conference (SLYT)
comment posted at 2:55 AM on Mar-16-13

On Wednesday, dozens of armed Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) agents raided several construction sites in Vancouver, Canada looking for undocumented workers. The raids struck many foreman as excessive, especially when, in one case, they were looking for two specific workers who were quickly located. And then they discovered the CBSA was accompanied by reality-television filming crews.
comment posted at 5:06 PM on Mar-14-13

Deep in the belly of New York’s subway system, a beautiful untouched station resides that has been forgotten for years with only a limited few knowing of its existence. But if you know what to do, you can see it for yourself. Bonus: The Underbelly Project, a secret underground art exhibition.
comment posted at 7:03 PM on Mar-14-13

It's nearly impossible to make consumer navigation technology work well in India. Western-style routing based on directions ("Turn left onto Woodrow Street") is impossible when streets often don't have names, not to mention the problems of using the local language. The solution? Landmark based navigation.
comment posted at 11:01 PM on Mar-13-13
comment posted at 11:20 PM on Mar-13-13

The facebook question that has everyone stirred up... I got 9. I am a fifty-one year old white guy. Did new math f-ck me up?
comment posted at 5:52 PM on Mar-13-13
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9 years and 364 days ago, the then MEP (and later cabinet minister), Chris Huhne caught a flight back from Brussels to London Stansted, landing at 10.27pm. He picked up his car, with the distinctive number plate H11HNE, and sped back to his home in Clapham, South London, setting in motion a chain of events that would ultimately see him and his wife, economist Vicky Pryce, each sentenced to 8 months in jail.
comment posted at 5:57 PM on Mar-11-13

Breitbarted! [BUSINESSINSIDER.COM] "Conservative news site Breitbart.com duped by fake story that Paul Krugman declared dankruptcy. A satirical item published last week purporting that economist Paul Krugman had filed for bankruptcy has spread to Boston.com and the conservative website Breitbart this morning. The item originated in The Daily Currant, a satirical news site. Austria's Format online magazine picked it up, and their report was subsequently cited by Boston.com [It has since been taken down 404 error.]. Then it spread to Breitbart. It has since been taken down this morning, but here's a screenshot:"
comment posted at 7:16 PM on Mar-11-13

"Britain’s modern party leaders are not ousted by stalking horses; they are dragged from their beds in the dead of night, and shot in the courtyard with a Sky News helicopter overhead." -- Former New Labour heavyweight and Gordon Brown acolyte Damian McBride explains how to survive a coup attempt when you're prime minister.
comment posted at 1:42 AM on Mar-11-13

Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams - "If you are unlucky enough to have your computer infected with a RAT, prepare to be sold or traded to the kind of person who enters forums to ask, "Can I get some slaves for my rat please? I got 2 bucks lol I will give it to you :b" At that point, the indignities you will suffer—and the horrific website images you may see—will be limited only by the imagination of that most terrifying person: a 14-year-old boy with an unsupervised Internet connection."
comment posted at 10:50 PM on Mar-10-13

Men in Saris: Mumbai's new lavani dancers Lavani is a folk dance, traditionally performed by women for men. The popularity of Bin Baykancha Tamasha (or Performance Without Women) and other female-impersonation groups in Mumbai suggests that the city may slowly be getting comfortable with flamboyant expressions of male sexuality.
comment posted at 11:55 PM on Mar-10-13

Bangalore based blogger ecophilo shares his experiences of attending this year's vast gathering of pilgrims at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad this year. Previous thread on the Kumbh Mela, what it is and why the Maha Kumbh only takes place every 144 years. Here's a snippet: It all began with Twitter. There were a few on my timeline who were tweeting about the Maha Kumbh Mela, 2013 and a thought took root in my mind. Can I make it to the Kumbh Mela this year? After all, it was tempting to be part of the worlds oldest and largest human gathering - and it seemed within reach too. And The Kumbh Mela was not a place that had ever figured in my list of 'things to experience'.
comment posted at 7:48 AM on Mar-9-13
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Nora Ephron’s Final Act by Jacob Bernstein (her son). [NYTimes.com]

"At 10 p.m. on a Friday night in a private room on the 14th Floor of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on 68th and York Avenue, my mother was lying in her bed hallucinating, in that dream space people go on their way to being gone."

comment posted at 7:21 PM on Mar-6-13

The first District line train out of Upminster in the morning is the first train anywhere on the underground network. It leaves the depot at 4.53, the only train anywhere in the system to set out from its base before 5am ... if you catch that train, you might be tempted to say ta-dah!—except you probably wouldn't, because nobody is thinking ta-dah! at seven minutes to five in the morning; certainly nobody on this train. People look barely awake, barely even alive. They feel the same way they look; I know because, this morning, I'm one of them.

John Lanchester on the experience, at once aversive and hypnotic, of catching the London Underground. Lanchester's article is an extract from his forthcoming entry in the new Penguin Lines series of tube-reading-friendly books released to commemorate the Underground's 150th anniversary. Meanwhile, the Guardian have compiled a collaborative Spotify playlist of songs that mention Tube stations, for those so inclined.
comment posted at 6:47 PM on Mar-6-13

A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013. Summary. The Atlantic responds.
comment posted at 3:56 AM on Mar-6-13

Are interns the slave economy of the US? Internships are increasingly becoming industry standards; the time college graduates work for little or nothing and get the valuable experience they need to get a "real" job. In the meantime, they are saddled with student loans they can't pay and living with mom and dad.
comment posted at 6:00 PM on Mar-2-13

"Oh, Anne! With your small head and pert nose and oversized, ready smile and glossy pixie cut and squeakily tuneful speaking voice, uttering lines like “It came true!” as you gaze at your newly won Oscar with moistened doe-eyes, wearing a powder-pink Prada gown adorned with diamonds and bows: Why are you so annoying?"
comment posted at 12:31 AM on Mar-1-13

Alice Finch has used 400,000 LEGO pieces to create Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in wonderful detail. [via]
comment posted at 6:15 AM on Feb-28-13
comment posted at 6:16 PM on Feb-28-13