Too tired to work after losing an hour? Me too. You might as well just read this lot until it's time to leave 
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- The legacy of Rotten.com - Audra Schroeder remembers the original shock site: ”a place where you could see images of people hit by trains, self-immolation, the gory aftermath of car crashes, failed suicide attempts, dismemberment, botched executions, orange juice enemas, and perverse pornography.” HT to SimonMac for this one
- Bugging out: How rampant online piracy squashed one insect photographer - Alex Wild explains how rampant image theft is driving him out of business: ”This is definitely the story of how copyright infringement takes up more of my time than I wish to devote to it. Copyright infringement drains my productivity to the point where I create hundreds fewer images each year. And it's why, in part, I am leaving professional photography for an academic position less prone to the frustrations of a floundering copyright system.” He’a also now fighting back: FAQ: So Your Company Has Been Found Using Alex’s Photographs Without Permission. What Next?
- Inside the Deep Web Drug Lab - "Welcome to DoctorX’s Barcelona lab, where the drugs you bought online are tested for safety and purity. No questions asked." A look at the Spanish drug education and harm reduction organisation that now provides an anonymous, international drug purity testing service.
- Could the LHC make an Earth-killing black hole? - "Spoiler: NO, not a chance. Now find out why." HT to Alias for this
- "It's Not My Job to Plug Things In," and Other Nightmare IT Stories - We all love a good round-up of tech support horror stories, and there’s some corkers in here: ”My SIL asked me to diagnose a problem with her Macbook. She forgot to warn me that her Macbook was filled with photos of her in a three-way with two guys in a hotel room. She looked like she was genuinely having the time of her life in those pictures, so I was simultaneously shocked and proud of her for it.”
- Rate My Sausage - Probably the best sausage review blog; I’m surprised to find I’ve never linked to it before. He was unimpressed by Marks and Spencer’s cheapo ones: ”These are not just your usual crap, sloppy supermarket sausages – these are M&S crap, sloppy supermarket sausages. I bet Twiggy and Myleene Klass wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole.”
- Three asterisks and the truth - Writer William Gallagher on handling swearing in scripts: ”Just as an aside, when I worked on Radio Times magazine I remember hearing about the very rare times they included any swearing… always the first letter followed by asterisks or some combination of other symbols. And every time, readers would complain. It’s just that sometimes they complained the there weren’t the correct number of asterisks or whatever.”
- Inappropriate demands to GPs - "Increasingly, however, many GPs feel that what is expected of them exceeds what might reasonably be considered fulfilment of healthcare need, or that it might reasonably be expected to be met by friends, family or other trusted sources of advice." A list of some of the inappropriate, bizarre, or rather saddening requests (or demands) made of GPs by patients.
- How Rioja Got its Wire and Other Just So Stories - "Have you ever wondered why Chianti no longer comes in a basket? Or why the Pope is so into Châteauneuf-du-Pape? Here we take a look at some of the weirdest accoutrements on the outside of a wine bottle – and how they got there in the first place."
- Dinka: Legendary Cattle Keepers of Sudan - Amazing gallery, hosted at the Google Cultural Institute, of photographs of the Dinka people of Sudan, taken from the 1970s onwards by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher:
Happy invoicing!
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